WTF 3/6/2024

 

Trump lies to garner Black votes… 

Been a week or so since I’ve mentioned to y’all about the lies that spew out of the overweight orange haired constant prevaricator and presumptive Republican candidate for president’s mouth.

So let me try and catch up a tad…

On February 23 Trump appeared at a gathering of the Black Conservative Federation in South Carolina and during a speech said, “Unlike racist Joe Biden, I have spent my entire life working hand in hand with Black Americans to create jobs, build buildings, invest in our communities and expand opportunities and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color. I built a lot of buildings. I want to tell you, a Black worker is a great worker. You’ve done an incredible job.”

Now since Trump first ran for the presidency as well as during his term in office he has often claimed he had done more for Black Americans than any other president… or at least since Abraham Lincoln.

Simply put… he is lying his ass off.

Lyndon B. Johnson for one outdid him a wide margin considering that he signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then in 65 signed into law the Voting Rights Act. Those two events alone would appear to place Johnson on the heels of Lincoln as the president who made the most lasting impact on the lives of Black Americans.

But according to Trump it was because of his presidency that Black folk experience a near historically low unemployment as well as seeing a massive increase in funding for Black colleges and universities.

Both claims are at best debatable and at worst outright falsehoods.

Still, as he runs for another term as the president of this country and campaigns in front of Black conservatives he brings out those false accomplishments once again as he said, “We achieved the lowest African American unemployment rate ever recorded.”

Which if the pathological liar had paid any attention to the facts then he would aware that Black unemployment under Biden’s time in the White House Black employment has fallen further than it ever did during Trumps time in the White House… in fact under Trump Black unemployment hit a low of 5.3% percent in August 2019, but by March 2020 rose up to 6.1% percent while under Biden the rate dipped to 4.8% in April 2023 and in January was at 5.3%.

As for his assertion… of course without ever providing any proof of what he was claiming… that Bidens was a racist he should be careful of throwing around such an accusation when his history is checkered with various racist acts of his own making.

Let me count the ways…

1) In 1973 the Justice Department sued a Trump company in what a front-page New York Times headline declared, “Major Landlord Accused of Anti-Black Bias in City.” The article provided  detailed information of how the Justice Department was charging them with violating the 1968 Fair Housing Act (another Johnson bill that helped Black people) in the operation of 39 buildings through their Trump Management Corporation. The main point being that the NYC Human Rights Commission ran a test of what would happen if Black and White people tried to rent the same Trump apartments and found that White people could easily get a rental, but Black people were told nothing was available.

Trump, then 27, took the lead in defending the case and told the Times that the charges “are absolutely ridiculous… We never have discriminated, and we never would.” And of course using the infamous Roy Cohn playbook of counter accusations and filing of law suits, the Trump Management Corporation turned around and sued the U.S. government.

Two years later, in 1975, Trump settled the DOJ suit without admitting wrongdoing. Under the settlement, the company was required to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week, for two years and advertise in the Amsterdam News, a Black newspaper. And still in 1978, the Justice Department had to charge Trump’s organization with being in breach of the agreement by continuing to discriminate against Black people. And that case dragged on until 1982 due to the fact he original consent decree expired.

When Trump became president, his administration scaled back enforcement of fair housing laws such as those that were enacted with the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

2) Two weeks after five Black and Latino teenagers were implicated in a brutal attack on a White woman jogging in New York’s Central Park on April 19, 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age.” He never said the youths should be executed but the implication was clear.  

What transpired back then was that the five teens were put through intensive and long interrogations where they admitted to some level of involvement in the attack, but they later recanted their statements, saying they had been coerced by police. Still the suspects were convicted of violent offenses including assault, robbery, rape, sodomy and attempted murder and  got sentences that ranged from five to 15 years in prison.

Eventually in 2002, the five were exonerated by DNA evidence.

Yusef Salaam, one of the accused, said,  “Everybody, including Donald Trump, rushed to judge us, and therefore it became that much more difficult to be able to mount a really successful fight. And, of course, we lost.”

New York City wound up settling a wrongful-conviction suit that Trump then told the New York Daily News was a “disgrace” while adding that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.”

After he became president when the issue ws once again brought up Trump told reporters, “You have people on both sides of that, They admitted their guilt.”

3) As for Trump’s view of Black workers?

In his 1991c book “Trumped,” former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino president John R. O’Donnell, wrote that Trump once said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also claimed Trump said of his accountants: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

Trump labels O’Donnell as a disgruntled employee, but then is quoted in a 1997 Playboy article saying, “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

4) Trump launched his career in politics by making himself the most prominent advocate of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory falsely alleging that Barack Obama was born in the USA.

5) During his first year as the president there was the controversial rally by white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville led to the death of a counter protester and Trump went on record as saying there were “some very fine people on both sides.”

As if racist SOBs of any ilk whatsoever could be, or should be, called fine people… fine dirty rotten bastards might be appropriate. But “fine” people? Please.  

Now as he runs to be reelected as our president Trump ties to ingratiate himself with Black people by trying to present himself as some sort of martyr for civil rights by saying racist tripe , such as “I am being indicted for you, the Black population.”

He told those mostly of Black conservatives in Columbia, S.C., “A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me, because they had been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.” He added that “the Black people” are “on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them.”

And continuing with his racist stereotypes of Blacks he added, “The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know, they do shirts.” 

None that I am aware of…  

And part of the problem in the Republican Party is it’s not just Trump with this racist bullshit… he’s the loudest and most blatant voice… it includes other prominent Republican officials such as Florida Gov. DeSantis who is making great inroads in censoring the truth regarding Black history so white people don’t feel out sorts about the truth of what mostly people of  white European ancestry did to Blacks since they first put foot on this continent. Or Nikki Haley when she inconceivably insists that “America has never been a racist country.”

But in the end it is Trump that leads the racist GOP platform the loudest, the boldest and most conspicuously. 

In the end Trump is not a friend of we the people be they White or Black or any of any other ethnicity or skin tone.

Another thousand words…