President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have a very firm grasp of the world around him. This Friday, he visited Doral, Florida, where he was set “to discuss drug trafficking in South America while visiting the U.S. Southern Command,” according to a CBS Miami/CNN report. While in Doral, Trump devolved into some truly bizarre tangents. For example, at one point, he made the absolutely ridiculous suggestion that “nobody ever heard” of the fact that President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican until Trump came along and reminded everyone. Suggesting that nobody had ever heard of a basic historical fact is blatantly ridiculous.
As reported by CNN’s Manu Raju, Trump commented:
‘People don’t remember – nobody ever heard of it until I came along, nobody remembered it for a long time or they didn’t use it at least, I use it all the time: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. You know you say that and people say, “I didn’t know that.”‘
Trump in Doral, Florida: “People don’t remember – nobody ever heard of it until I came along, nobody remembered it for a long time or they didn’t use it at least, I use it all the time: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. You know you say that and people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 10, 2020
There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that nobody “remembered” that Lincoln was a Republican. It’s a basic historical fact. Hasn’t Trump ever heard of books? Open a basic history book, and voila: there’s the information. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican — he doesn’t even need to open a book. He could just Google it. Hasn’t he ever heard of Google? Or does he just get all of his information from Fox News programs — and, more recently, shows on the ultra-sycophantic One America News Network? Also — Lincoln’s Republican affiliation doesn’t absolve Trump and more recent Republicans of their brazen pandering to and participation in a racist party establishment.
Amidst nationwide unrest over police brutality and other forms of systemic, societally-embedded racism against black Americans and other marginalized communities, Trump has tried to paint himself and his allies as some kind of grand protectors of the downtrodden — or something. In reality, he’s not done much besides coast on the success of others. Unemployment rates, for example, were going down across the board well before he came along — and now they’re all super high again thanks to the Coronavirus chaos that he’s helped exacerbate. The “opportunity zone” tax breaks that he helped implement which give tax breaks to people who invest in underserved areas like some black communities most immediately benefit high-income people.
