While it is certainly newsworthy that Donald Trump went on Fox & Friends and contradicted himself on statements he’s made about the Michael Cohen case currently being argued in court, some of the most explosive moments from that interview were his comments on the black community.
When asked about the recent controversy over Kanye West’s support of Trump (Kanye West once caused controversy by saying that George W. Bush didn’t “care about black people”), the president began ranting about the backlash and listing all of his great (fake) accomplishments in helping the black community.
Donald Trump's black-on-black crime tweet is wrong in so many ways https://t.co/KZ9x9mMfsG?
— Cheri Jacobus (@CheriJacobus) April 26, 2018
Trump defended the rapper by saying his support is based on all of the great things Trump has done for people of color.
‘Kanye looks and he sees black unemployment at the lowest it’s been in the history of our country.’
On this day in 1989, Trisha Meili was beaten and raped in Central Park. Five black and brown boys – Korey, Antron, Raymond, Kevin and Yusef – were arrested, tried, convicted + sentenced to prison. @RealDonaldTrump called for their death. They were innocent. pic.twitter.com/qocHLXnluf
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) April 19, 2018
Steve Doocey asked Trump whether he believes “Republicans [have] done a bad job ignoring the black community until now?”
‘You know, I think it was just a custom. People don’t realize, you know, if you go back to the Civil War, it was the Republicans that really did the thing. Lincoln was a Republican, I mean, somehow it changed over the years, and I will say, I really believe it’s changing back.’
Not only did a Republican president just admit that the GOP had a “custom” of ignoring issues faced by the black community (a claim that the GOP has denied for years), he also continued pushing similar lies from his 2016 campaign about crime.
‘Now they voted for me. Crime is way down and really, importantly, the unemployment picture is the best it’s been in the history of our country for African Americans.’
People of color did not vote for Trump; he received only eight percent of the black vote in 2016 while his opponent, Hillary Clinton, received 89 percent of the vote. Crime is, in fact, way down, but inner-city violent crime has been on the decline since 1995.
Unemployment rates for the black community are very low under Trump, but insisting that has anything to do with Trump’s policies ignores the facts. Unemployment for all Americans has been on a decline since the end of President Obama’s first year in office.
His claims about “the lowest rate in history” are also suspect. Data on black unemployment are only available since 1972, and the history of the U.S. is actually quite a bit longer than 46 years. The unemployment rate for black Americans was also only at it’s lowest rate during the first year of Trump’s presidency, when Obama’s policies were still in effect. Once Trump began his second year and his own policies took over, that “lowest rate in history” claim ended.
According to Forbes magazine:
‘It was true for a few days. It rebounded to 7.7% in January, compared to 7.0% for the fourth quarter of 2017 and 6.8% for the month of December alone. While that happened, unemployment for whites lowered to 3.5% and was flat for Hispanics.’
See Trump’s interview below. His statements on Kanye West and all of his own wonderful (fake) accomplishments on race at 16:15.
Featured image screengrab via YouTube
