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Trump declares "I'm not a racist, I have black friends" [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-15  

Trump has made it official that he is NOT Racist. Because, of course, he has “black friends.” I am so glad this is finally cleared up — some of us had a few concerns.

Former President Donald Trump wants Americans to know that he's not a racist -- and he has the Black friends to prove it. In an interview with Semafor, Trump touted his relationships with assorted retired Black athletes such as former NFL player Lawrence Taylor and boxer Mike Tyson to shore up his standing with the Black community. “I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” said Trump. “They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist — and I’m not racist!”

Yeah, ok. There are some people who will believe this nonsense. Because, clearly, Mike Tyson is such a great judge of character. I mean, that settles the issue right? He’s got Kanye West and P Diddy in his corner, how could he be “all bad?”

And yet, some people are still kinda skeptical.

"He lost Black voters by a 92-8 margin in his last election, according to a Pew Research study, despite high hopes for a breakthrough that cycle," the report notes. "In 2016, he settled for boasting that fewer Black voters had showed up to the polls that year, which he said was 'almost as good' as their support."

And yeah, black people like him because he’s a criminal too, just like they are.

Donald Trump thinks the justice system is treating him unfairly, and millions of Americans agree. Trump also thinks his recent felony conviction might help him with Black voters in November. And given Blacks’ understandable mistrust of the justice system, he might be right. New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, elevated what’s normally a minor offense — falsifying business expenses — into to a felony crime, stretched the legal interpretations of the law and statute of limitations, and multiplied the charges (34 of them) to increase the penalties. Bragg got the conviction, with Trump’s sentencing coming on July 11. Regardless of whether Trump is guilty of wrongdoing, it’s the widespread perception that the Justice Department targeted him for who he is, rather than what he did, that could resonate with Black voters — because many of them feel the justice system also targets them. For example, Ella Wiley, senior communications associate with the Legal Defense Fund, has written, “It cannot be overlooked how — in addition to vast racial disparities in policing, arrests, and detention — every stage of the criminal justice process following the filing of charges also contributes to the mass incarceration of Black people in this country.”

Frankly, that is a load of crap. As I’ve written before the DOJ and FBI have been systematically protecting Trump for years. He should have been convicted by the FBI and DOJ for being “Individual #1” in the Michael Cohen case. He should have been convicted for 8 counts of Obstruction of Justice in the Mueller case. Rod Rosenstein wouldn’t let Mueller do a counter-intelligence investigation of Trump. The OLC would let Trump be indicted while he was in office. He should have been arrested on Jan 21st for the attack on the Capitol. The FBI didn’t want to do the search warrant on Mar-A-Lago. The FBI is “Trumpland” who leaked info about the Hillary case to help him in 2016. Even Alvin Bragg dropped the case against Trump when he first became DA only to reluctantly pick it up again later when more evidence came in.

The idea that he’s some sort of “victim” is flatly ridiculous. Even if Mike Tyson thinks so.

Continued….

Of course, Trump also has a long history of race baiting, most infamously when he said there were some "very fine people" among the white nationalist rioters at the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and when he led a national crusade to declare America's first Black president to be ineligible for the post based on bogus conspiracy theories about him having been born in Kenya.

Right, he’s the one who thought that there “fine people” somewhere in among the packs of Neo-Nazis that descended on Charlottlesville and ultimately murdered a woman and injured dozens more people because they support the Confederate General who fought against the U.S. Government in order to preserve the enslavement of black people.

“Fine people” thought Blacks should still be slaves. That’s a lovely thought.

And what did he say about the vicious beating of Deandre Harris?

He said that it was the “Alt-Left who came charging with their sticks and attacked!”

x x YouTube Video Say what now?

Harris was brutally and bloodily attacked by Neo-Nazis.

Trump was the guy who claimed Obama wasn’t an American citizen, and demanded to see his birth certificate. And then after he saw it, kept making up bullshit about him — like demanding to see his grades arguing that he didn’t deserve to get into Harvard.

And yet, he was the first African-America to become editor of the Harvard Law Review - how’s that happen - magic?

Trump, however, thinks that Black voters will see "strength" and support him anyway. "They see what I’ve done and they see strength, they want strength, okay,” he told the publication. “They want strength, they want security. They want jobs, they want to have their jobs. They don’t want to have millions of people come and take their jobs. And we — that’s what’s happening. These people that are coming into our country are taking jobs away from African Americans and they know it.”

He’s the guy who keeps claiming that “crime is rampant in Democrat cities” - by which he means majority Black cities. Like Baltimore which he called “Rodent infested .”

After President Donald Trump attacked U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland on Saturday as a “brutal bully” and called his 7th District “disgusting, rat and rodent infested,” officials, residents and political commentators jumped to the defense of the congressman and his Baltimore home. Some went so far as to call Trump’s tweets racist as the president again took to Twitter to vilify his political enemies, using inflammatory language that some believe stokes the nation’s racial divisions as he prepares to run for reelection in 2020. “Elijah Cummings grew up facing racist bullies like Trump and learned to confront them with qualities unknown to Trump: courage and integrity. The great people of Baltimore have something Trump craves but will never have as he degrades the Office of the President: dignity,” U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland tweeted.

He also said the same thing about Washington D.C.

Donald Trump has promised to clean up a 'rat-infested, graffiti-infested, sh**hole' Washington DC in campaign rally in Iowa - a day before the first caucus of the GOP. Trump, considered a favorite to win the GOP nomination for a third time in a row, appeared to be referring to an anti-Israel protest in Washington in November. He looked at the state of disrepair in the capital and suggested a federal takeover might be on the cards for Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser's city. 'We have a capital that we all love. Right now, it is a rat-infested, graffiti-infested sh**hole where people are being killed,' Trump said in a campaign speech Sunday.

And Atlanta which he said was “crime infested.”

President-elect Donald Trump harshly criticized Georgia Rep. John Lewis on Saturday, tweeting that his district was “in horrible shape and falling apart (and not to mention crime infested) …” Trump’s tweets came in response to Lewis’ comments to NBC News’ Chuck Todd in a taped interview that aired on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” The congressman said, “I don’t see the President-elect as a legitimate president.” He said he thought “Russians participated in helping get [Trump] elected.” Lewis, a longtime civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., also said he will not attend Trump’s inauguration this week. To be sure, Atlanta, which makes up most of Lewis’ district, is a snapshot of two extremes. For some, it is a safe, thriving place to be wealthy and well-educated. For others, there is entrenched poverty, and some of the lowest upward economic mobility in the nation.

And Obama’s hometown of Chicago which he said is riddled with crime.

President Trump once again criticized Chicago and its violence on Monday, saying the city is "worse than Afghanistan" or any war zone that the U.S. is in, according to Forbes. He made the comments during a law enforcement roundtable at the White House where the president made his clear opposition to defunding police and attacked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for supporting police reform. The president also condemned cities that are run by Democrats and “radical libs,” claiming that they are racked with violent crime and overrun with protesters who “rip everything down in front of them," according to Forbes.

And Milwaukee which he recently called “Horrible.”

While meeting with House Republicans, former President Donald Trump called Milwaukee, the host of the 2024 Republican National Convention, a “horrible” city overrun by crime.

So he thinks supposedly Black people are unfairly targeted by law enforcement (which they are), like he allegedly is, but he also says all the cities with Black people are “riddled with crime” and filth and vermin.

For a guy who says he’s “not a racist” - he kinda sounds exactly like a racist.

Instead of defending black people, particular against police and judicial abuse, he claims they deserve to be over-policed and over-enforced.

He supports bringing back Stop-And-Frisk which dramatically failed to stop crime, but did implement a regime of harassment and intimidation against Black and Brown people.

Trump: Politicians who spread this dangerous anti-police sentiment make life easier for criminals and more dangerous for law-abiding citizens. I have directed the Attorney General to go to the Great City of Chicago to help straighten out the terrible shooting wave. We want to straighten it out, we want to straighten it out fast. There’s no reason for what’s going on there.

There’s 100 years of racial policing, politics and race riots that are going on there. That’s a pretty big reason for people to be forced into trying to take the law, and their own self-protection in their own hands.

I’ve told them to work with local authorities to try to change the terrible deal the city of Chicago entered into with the ACLU which ties law enforcement’s hands and to strongly consider Stop and Frisk. It works and it was meant for problems like Chicago.

The deal he’s talking about is the Consent Decree with Chicago police that was established by the Obama DOJ after they found the following problems with the Chicago Police:

“One of my highest priorities as Attorney General has been to ensure that every American enjoys police protection that is lawful, responsive, and transparent,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. “Sadly, our thorough investigation into the Chicago Police Department found that far too many residents of this proud city have not received that kind of policing. The resulting deficit in trust and accountability is not just bad for residents – it’s also bad for dedicated police officers trying to do their jobs safely and effectively. With this announcement, we are laying the groundwork for the difficult but necessary work of building a stronger, safer, and more united Chicago for all who call it home.” “The failures we identified in our findings – that we heard about from residents and officers alike — have deeply eroded community trust,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division. “But today is a moment of opportunity, where we begin to move from identifying problems to developing solutions. I know our findings can lead to reform and rebuild community-police trust because we’ve seen it happen in community after community around the country over the past 20 years.” […] The department found that CPD’s pattern or practice of unconstitutional force is largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force, responds to allegations of misconduct, trains and supervises officers, and collects and reports data on officer use of force. The department also found that the lack of effective community-oriented policing strategies and insufficient support for officer wellness and safety contributed to the pattern or practice of unconstitutional force. In addition, the department also identified serious concerns about the prevalence of racially discriminatory conduct by some CPD officers and the degree to which that conduct is tolerated and in some respects caused by deficiencies in CPD’s systems of training, supervision and accountability. The department’s findings further note that the impact of CPD’s pattern or practice of unreasonable force falls heaviest on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods, such that restoring police-community trust will require remedies addressing both discriminatory conduct and the disproportionality of illegal and unconstitutional patterns of force on minority communities.

So just to be clear, the racism of Chicago PD was proven. It was documented. And Trump’s response was to call for more of it, using the bigoted policy of Stop and Frisk.

But, y’know, that shit isn’t racist at all.

For the record, almost none of these are the cities with the highest rates of crime. That would be Albuquerque, Memphis, St. Louis, Vancover, Oakland, Baltimore, San Francisco, Detroit, Baton Rogue and Anchorage. If we’re talking cities with the highest rate of murder that would be: St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Kansas City, MI, Cleveland, Memphis, Newatk and Cincinatti.

So what’s the point of calling Atlanta (#23/20), Chicago (#44/14), Milwaukee (#25/13) and Washington D.C. (#30/19) “crime-riddled” when only Baltimore ranks in the Top 10? What else do those particular cities have in common?

Black people is what they have in common. The fact that they are in Democratic States with Democratic (and usually Black) Mayors is what they have in common. But as you can see, the majority of crime happens in Republican States, particularly if they have lax gun laws.

States that received an “F” grade based on the strength of their gun laws—according to the latest scorecard from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence—saw the highest homicide rates: 1 States with “F” grades saw 25 percent higher homicide rates than states with “C” or “D” grades. 2 States with “F” grades saw 61 percent higher homicide rates than states with “A” or “B” grades—states with the strongest gun laws. 3

The states with the highest firearm mortality rates are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wyoming. 4 These states all received an “F” grade for their weak gun laws. 5 Children and teenagers are most vulnerable in states with weaker gun laws: In 2020, the 10 states with the highest rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers ages 1–19 were Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Alabama. 6 All of these states received an “F” grade for their weak gun laws.

Reports also suggest that rates of nonfatal gunshot injuries sustained during assaults are higher in states with weaker gun laws: In 2017, the most recent year with available data across all states, states that received an “F” grade had a rate of nonfatal gunshot injuries that was 22 percent higher than states with “C” or “D” grades and 59 percent higher than states with “A” or “B” grades.7

So Democrats and Black people are *not* the primary source of crime in the U.S. and frankly only an ignorant racist would believe that they are.

When there were massive protests in the streets over police violence on Trump’s watch was he sympathetic to the issue? Did he try and implement reforms? No, not really. He used badgeless Federal forces to grab people off the street in unmarked cars.

x x YouTube Video He used Federal Troops to violently clear Layfayette Park.

Gen Mark Milley, the top US military leader, resisted Donald Trump’s demands that his forces “crack skulls” and “beat the fuck out” of protesters marching against police brutality and structural racism, according to a much-trailed new book. “Just shoot them,” the president reportedly said. CNN reported the latest excerpts from Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael Bender, a Wall Street Journal reporter. The book will be published in August. […] When Trump was in power, Milley had to deal repeatedly with presidential rage. According to CNN, Trump highlighted footage of confrontations between law enforcement officers and protesters and said: “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people. Crack their skulls!” Trump also reportedly told law enforcement and military leaders he wanted the military to “beat the fuck out” of protesters and said: “Just shoot them.” Bender reports that in the face of opposition from Milley and the then attorney general, William Barr, Trump said: “Well, shoot them in the leg – or maybe the foot. But be hard on them!” Milley is also reported to have told Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, to “shut the fuck up”, after Miller said “cities are burning” amid protests prompted by the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis last May. Throughout a tense summer, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a historic piece of legislation regarding domestic unrest, but ultimately did not do so.

During his re-election bid Trump had promised to repeat these efforts and do them even more strongly calling for the Military to be used against protestors.

As recent reports have revealed, former President Donald Trump and his allies are making plans for how a second Trump administration would use the powers of the federal government to punish Trump’s critics and political opponents. Among other things, Trump would reportedly invoke the Insurrection Act — a law that gives the president nearly unchecked powers to use the military as a domestic police force — on his first day in office, so that he could quash any public protests against him. Unless Congress acts now to reform this dangerous and antiquated law, there’s little anyone could do to stop him. Federal military forces are usually barred from enforcing civilian laws by the Posse Comitatus Act. This prohibition reflects a tradition in American law and political thought that views an army turned inward as an inherent threat to democracy and individual liberty. But the Posse Comitatus Act is not an absolute rule. It allows federal troops to participate in law enforcement when doing so has been expressly authorized by Congress. The Insurrection Act provides that authorization. The intent behind the act is to allow the president to use the military to assist civilian authorities when they are overwhelmed by an insurrection, rebellion, or other civil unrest, or to enforce civil rights laws when state or local governments can’t or won’t enforce them. In such cases, a narrow exception to the general rule against using the military for law enforcement makes good sense. The problem is that the Insurrection Act creates a giant loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act rather than a limited exception to it.

He has called for DA’s who have tried to curb police abuse and unfair bail practices against minorities to be prosecuted.

3. President Trump will take on the radical Marxist prosecutors who have abolished cash bail and refuse to charge criminals. President Trump will direct the DOJ to open civil rights investigations into radical leftist prosecutor’s officers, such as those in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to determine whether they have illegally engaged in race-based law enforcement. […] 5. President Trump has committed to deploying federal assets, including the National Guard, to restore law and order when local law enforcement refuses to act […] This bill will also increase vital liability protections for officers because the Democrats want to take those protections away from our police, because we want them to do their jobs, and we want them to do their jobs right. You can't take their protections away if you're going to have them do their jobs properly. Second, to qualify for this new funding and all other Justice Department grants, I will insist that local jurisdictions return to proven common sense policing measures, such as stop and frisk— very simple—you stop them and you frisk them, strictly enforcing existing gun laws against convicted felons, cracking down on the open use of illegal drugs, and cooperating with ICE to get criminal aliens off our streets and get them out of our country. Third, we will go after the radical Marxist prosecutors who are abolishing cash bail, refusing to charge crimes, and surrendering our cities to violent criminals. They have surrendered like never before. I will direct the DOJ to open civil rights investigations into radical left prosecutor’s offices, such as those in Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco to determine whether they have illegally engaged in race-based enforcement of the law. I will also work with Congress to give the victims of their Marxist policies the right to sue local officials for harm and suffering, and it has been great that they have caused. If your small business is pillaged because shoplifting goes unpunished, if you're brutally attacked by a violent felon released without bail or bond, then you will be entitled to massive damages.

He intends to block even the most meager efforts to curb the legacy of racial discrimination in our schools and business by viciously attacking DEI.

President Trump has pledged to fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. He will impose real standards on American colleges and universities, to include defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs, removing all DEI bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low-cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are getting their money's worth. Once back in the White House, President Trump will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination and will advance a measure to have schools that continue these illegal and unjust policies fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.

When he said “protect free speech” just like Elon Musk what he means is Hate Speech. White Supremacist Hate speech. When he says “engage in racial discrimination” he means “discrimination against White people” - not minorities — because he doesn't even believe or admit that discrimination against black and brown people is real. Even when he’s doing it himself.

Oklahoma just denied restitution to a pair of 100-year-old women who were survivors of the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921 where thousands of buildings and businesses were firebombed and hundreds of black people were murdered in the street by White Supremacist. There is no doubt that this happened, there is no doubt that these women were survivors of the event, and they’ve found mass graves of the victims — but the Oklahoma Supreme Court just plain refused to provide them compensation.

They know what happened is real, they know there were victims and survivors — but they didn't provide them a dime. It's not a matter that everyone is long dead, because they aren't. It’s not that the issue is disputed because it isn't. They just said “No.”

That’s the kind of judicial decision Trump would agree with.

Let’s recall that Trump’s first interaction with the federal government was when he and his father were sued for Racial Housing Discrimination.

The Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his father, Fred, and Trump Management in order to obtain a settlement in which Trump and his father would promise not to discriminate. The case eventually was settled two years later after Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for $100 million for making false statements. Those allegations were dismissed by the court. "Donald started his career, back in 1973, being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination — because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans, and he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy," Clinton said on Monday night. […] The lawsuit was based on evidence gathered by testers for the New York City Human Rights Division, which alleged that black people who went to Trump buildings were told there were no apartments available, while white people were offered units. Back then, Sheila Morse worked as one of those testers. When a black New Yorker was turned down for service and racial bias was suspected, Morse, who is white, would be dispatched to see if she received different treatment. In this case, a black man in search of an apartment in Brooklyn in 1972 saw a sign on a building: "apartment for rent." "He met with the superintendent, and the superintendent said, 'I'm very sorry, but the apartment is rented — it's gone,' " Morse says. "So the gentlemen said to him, 'Well, why is the sign out? I still see a sign that says apartment for rent.' And the superintendent said, 'Oh, I guess I forgot to take it down.' " When Morse went to the building to ask about the same apartment, she says, "They greeted me with open arms and showed me every aspect of the apartment." Morse says she reported her experience to the Human Rights Commission, and then returned to the apartment building. After she was offered a lease, the black man who had tried to rent the apartment entered the office with a city human rights commissioner, and the three of them confronted the building superintendent. "He said, 'Well, I'm only doing what my boss told me to do — I am not allowed to rent to black tenants,' " Morse says.

Trump’s father was arrested at a KKK riot.

Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested twice: in 1927 during a Ku Klux Klan riot, and in 1976 over code violations at a building he owned in Maryland. In the latter case, Fred Trump, also a real estate developer, was arrested in Prince George’s County, Md., just outside D.C. and known these days for its team of Black women in leadership and for being one of the country’s richest majority-Black counties. Donald Trump told The Washington Post in 2016 he had no idea about his father’s 1976 arrest. At the time, Trump was 30 and working for his father’s company.

Trump once suggested to Michael Cohen that every country run by a black person was a shithole.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former longtime lawyer and fixer, on Wednesday testified before Congress that Trump is a "racist" who once asked him if he "could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a "shithole." "[Trump] once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a 'shithole.' This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States," Cohen said as he testified before the House Oversight Committee about his relationship with Trump. Relatedly, Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as "shitholes" in a meeting with lawmakers at the White House on immigration in January 2018.

Reportedly Trump used the N-word backstage at the Apprentice.

Last week, Bill Pruitt, a former “Apprentice” producer, published a piece in Slate alleging that Trump actually used the racist slur in a meeting to refer to Jackson. Pruitt wrote one of Trump’s company’s managers suggested picking Jackson over Bill Rancic, the other remaining contestant and a white man. Pruitt wrote Trump winced before asking if America would accept a Black man [“N**ger] winning, referring to Jackson using the slur.

And there was a time during the filming of The Apprentice when Trump confronted a former Black contestant who had been removed from the show after saying he was "inarticulate and illiterate.”

Gene Folkes had just been jettisoned as a contestant on “The Apprentice” and was commiserating with a crew member at a bar inside the lobby of Trump Tower. He was indignant — and not just at having been kicked off the reality show after its star, Donald Trump, had delivered his catchphrase: “You’re fired.” One of two Black contestants chosen for that season in 2010, Folkes was insulted that Trump had called him inarticulate and accused him of illiteracy in a lengthy boardroom tirade minutes earlier. As the crew member, a Black woman who worked as a contestant manager, consoled him, Trump suddenly appeared at the bar. “He came up and he asked me: ‘Is this your woman? Because you two would make a really great couple. You both have the same background,’” Folkes told The Associated Press. The contestant manager quietly reminded Trump that she worked for him. Then, Trump made a comment similar to something he uttered in the boardroom that never aired on TV, Folkes said. “He said again, ‘It’s not like I used the N-word,’ and then he walked off, and that was that,” said Folkes, a New York-based consultant, podcast host and U.S. Air Force veteran.

Thanks for the small favor, Donnie.

He once said that he didn’t want black people handling his money and would require his black employees to hide when he arrived.

1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.” […] 1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”

1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”

2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”

2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”

2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”

And then there’s Trump’s history with the Exonerated Central Park 5 who he argued, when they were children, should be put to death.

1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.

But I mean, none of this really means anything. None of this proves a thing.

Because Trump has a “black friend.” Somewhere. Maybe Tim Scott? Or Byron Donalds?

That’s all you need, amirite?

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