President Donald Trump is honoring civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died at age 84 on Tuesday, the only way anyone could have imagined Trump would…
By making Jackson’s death all about himself.
To Trump’s credit — or that of whoever is writing his Truth Social posts these days — the first three or four sentences of Trump’s lengthy tribute to Jackson actually centered Jackson himself, calling him a “good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts.’”
From there, the commander-in-look-at-my-African-American-over-here took the opportunity to defend himself against well-earned allegations of racism, instead of keeping the focus on Jackson, whom Trump couldn’t even mention without including a microaggressive reference to his “street smarts.”
“Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way,” Trump wrote, crediting himself with providing “office space” for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which Jackson founded.
Trump then continued his tribute to Jesse Jackson by honoring himself for “single handedly” funding HBCUs, bringing opportunity for Black businesses, and getting CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM passed and signed, which, presumably, was a reference to legislation signed during his first term, the First Step Act, which essentially reinforced the Fair Sentencing Act, which was signed into law by former President Barack Obama, despite Trump’s claim that “no other President would even try” to pass criminal justice reform legislation.
Speaking of Obama, Trump couldn’t help but conclude his tribute to Jackson by taking an arbitrary swipe at America’s first Black president, whom Trump affectionately refers to by emphasizing his middle name, Hussein.
“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him. He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand,” Trump wrote.
So, just to recap: Trump paid tribute to Jesse Jackson by writing a lengthy post about himself and everything he thinks he gave Black people, attacked Obama for no discernible reason — outside of the fact that Obama has been living in his head rent-free for a decade — and then the president concluded his 100% self-serving post by finally circling back to Jackson, only to gossip about who he did and didn’t like.
Hell, it’s Trump’s obsession with Obama that resulted in the latest allegations of racism to come his way. Earlier this month, Trump posted a conspiracy video backing his absurd and thoroughly debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. The video ended with an AI-generated image of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes. Since then, he’s been struggling so hard to dodge allegations that he’s a racist that, last week, he resorted to sharing a video reel of him posing for photos with various Black celebrities, including Jackson.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time that Trump made himself the star of someone else’s obituary, but what we’re not going to do is let him use Jackson’s death to make an orangey-white savior out of himself. Not on this Black History Month.
Instead, I’ll just share a few of my past observations on Trump’s legacy of racism and undermining of the pro-Black Civil Rights movement.
Here’s what I wrote in December, after Trump declared “Black people love me” during a speech that was supposed to focus on affordability:
I really need this grand wizard of a president to stop pretending he hasn’t dedicated his second term to addressing white grievance, spreading hate speech against Somalis and Haitians, barring Black South Africans from migrating here while welcoming their white counterparts with open arms, ensuring that his anti-DEI war relegates us to whatever he thinks “Black jobs” are, stiffing HBCUs on funding, sending the military into our cities against the will of residents and that of city and state leaders, and lying about largely fictitious rises in crime to justify it.
Here’s what I wrote about Trump’s efforts to ban Black history into white-and-fragile oblivion:
Since the start of Trump’s abysmal second term, his administration has vowed to restore all honors, fort names, and monuments to the Confederacy, while forcing African American history museums to remove exhibits related to slavery and the civil rights movement, having his white attorneys decide how much Black history is too much Black history, and pushing right-wing curricula that white washes American history to omit anti-Black oppression, or spin it into a wrong that America worked tirelessly to right. Either way, the goal is and has always been to prioritize white feelings over Black historical truth.
And don’t get me started on all of the disappearing of slavery-related exhibits and writings that the National Park Service has removed or tried to remove since Jan. 20, 2025.
And, finally, here’s what I wrote about the Trump administration’s efforts to make anti-Black racism more difficult to study or even identify, by declaring any such research to be a threat to Trump’s war against all things diversity, equity, and inclusion:
Last year, Trump signed an executive order that required federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to stop using “disparate impact” data to identify discriminatory policies and practices that disproportionately harm certain groups, namely Black people and other people of color. The president also signed a similar order discouraging school administrators from using “disparate impact” data to address racial disparities in disciplinary actions taken against students, labeling it a DEI practice.
Around the same time last year, Trump’s MAGA-fied Department of Justice ended a wastewater settlement for a mostly Black Alabama town, falsely calling it “environmental justice as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” simply because environmental racism was addressed in the reaching of the settlement.
It’s almost as if, in the Trump administration’s world, anything that addresses systemic racism against anyone but white people is an unlawful DEI effort.
So, yeah — we’re not about to let the most outwardly racist president in our lifetime use Jesse Jackson’s legacy to play around in our faces and call himself our friend or savior.
Not during this Black History Month, or any other day.
SEE ALSO:
Sen. Tim Scott Copes With Finally Realizing His MAGA Daddy Is ‘Racist’
