Trump Claims He’s Done More for Black Americans Than the President Who Ended Slavery

Hey, remember when President Lincoln led the Union army through the American Civil War in an effort, among other things, to end slavery, and then issued the Emancipation Proclamation, paving the way for the 13th Amendment, which legally ended the white southerners’ ownership of Black Americans? Yeah, well, Trump says he has done much more for Black people in our country than that guy did.

The 45th president took to his weird little vanity social network, Truth Social, on Wednesday morning to brag about his professed gifts to Black people, writing, “Spoke with Mark Fisher yesterday, a great guy, very honored to have his and BLM’s support. I have done more for Black people than any other President (Lincoln?), including 10 year funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where they had none, Opportunity Zones, Criminal Justice Reform, and much more. Thank you to Mark!”

Let’s unpack. Mark Fisher is one of the co-founders of a Rhode Island local Black Lives Matter (BLM) group. Earlier this week, Fisher went on Fox and Friends and said, in summary, that he was sick of the Democratic party’s duplicity when it comes to the Black community—basically, that Dems in power pretend to care about them for votes and then don’t follow through when it counts, so now he supports Trump. 

So, the gist of Fisher’s complaints about Democrats in power? Fair. His decision to let the pendulum of his anger carry him so far the other way as to throw support behind the one candidate in the race who probably cares about the marginalized communities the least and would gladly harm anybody in exchange for votes, well, that’s questionable.

Trump and his erstwhile supporters at Fox News are grabbing his support and running with it, presenting this one guy who represents a small regional chapter of the group as if he is a major player in the entire BLM organization—an organization that Trump, Fox News, and all the rest have spent years attacking and calling “terrorists,” by the way. But now Trump is using Fisher’s “support” as evidence that he’s been dedicated to helping the Black community along.

So, never mind the president who was integral to ending slavery, or the guy who presented Congress with the Civil Rights Act in 1963, or the guy who is actually part of the Black community, who changed lives forever because representation matters, among other things. Trump says he’s the best.

(featured image: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)