“We got to find a way to work on this man’s heart,” Martin Luther King III said about President Trump on MLK Day. Mr. King, I am afraid that converting Donald Trump into a caring, unbiased human being is a lost cause. Here is brief chronological history of Trump’s best-known racist acts (pulled from a variety of sources):
• Housing discrimination: In the early ’70s, Trump’s company was sued by the federal government for violations of the Fair Housing Act. Trump hired Roy Cohn (Sen. McCarthy’s associate) as his defense lawyer. Trump ended up settling with the government and pledging to let black people rent his apartments in the future. However, in 1978 the Department of Justice alleged that Trump had ignored his pledge and was still violating the law.
• Central Park Five: Trump buys ads saying “Bring back the death penalty,” implying that the five young black men charged with raping a jogger should be executed. Years later, it is shown conclusively that they did not commit the crime. Trump does not accept the findings or financial judgment.
• Casinos: From 1992–2000, Trump says and does several offensive things regarding Native Americans and blacks related to his casinos.
• Birther movement: Stating that Obama was born in Kenya, the movement is started in 2011 by Trump, who also falsely attacks Obama’s school record.
• Mexican rapists: Trump stated in 2015 that Mexico was exporting rapists to the U.S.
• Mexican-American judge: In the Trump University case, Trump asked that Judge Curiel, born in Indiana, recuse himself.
• Appeal to racism in campaign: Trump accepts support from racists in his Presidential bid. “Voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke said.
• Charlottesville: Trump equates anti-racist protesters with violent white supremacists and Nazi agitators, calling them “fine people.” He recants in a carefully read statement, but then goes back and says he was correct.
• Holocaust remembrance: Trump issues a commemorative statement excluding any mention of the 6 million Jews who died in Nazi extermination camps.
• NFL: Trump purposefully twists players taking a knee to protest police violence against blacks into disrespect for America.
• Shithole: Trump says we should have immigration from Norway versus non-white nations.
These actions speak for themselves, Mr. King. The best we can hope for is that the electorate will wake up.
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