Donald Trump, who was sued by the Justice Department in 1973 for discriminating against Black tenants, told a group of Black conservative voters that “a lot of people” have said his four indictments are the reason “Black people like me.” In the same breath, Trump painted himself as a victim of discrimination.
Addressing the Black Conservative Federation Honors Gala in Columbia, South Carolina on Friday evening, Trump boasted about the pardons he gave out while in office, and continued to falsely lament that the 91 charges against him were all part of a conspiracy to keep him out of the White House.
“We beat em twice. I got indicted for nothing – for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference — and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time, and a fourth time,” he said during Friday’s event. “And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me, because they’ve been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing. Possibly — maybe there’s something there.”
Trump — whose long history of racism includes his calling for the execution of five Black and brown kids known as the Central Park Five in 1989 (who were proven innocent 27 years later), dismissal of Black men dying at the hands of police, and preaching white supremacy — went on to compare himself to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We share the dream of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He was great. What a speech,” he continued, before claiming that the he considered his indictments a “great badge of honor.” He added, “I’m being indicted for you, the American people. I’m being indicted for you, the Black population.”
The former president also made a cringe attempt at humor, declaring earlier in his speech that the “lights are so bright in my eyes I can’t see people … I can only see the Black ones. I can’t see any white ones. That’s how far I’ve come. That’s a long way isn’t it?”
Trump, whose patronizing, white-savior talk is well documented, later claimed that the Black community had embraced his mugshot, bragging that “they do shirts, and they sell them for $19 apiece. It’s pretty amazing. Millions of these things have been sold.”
The GOP frontrunner has continued to skew his legal woes as a sign of political persecution. Earlier this week, he compared himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died this month in an arctic penal colony and is widely believed to have been murdered by the government of Vladimir Putin. Despite the praise of and self-comparisons to Navalny, Trump — who maintained chummy relations with Putin during his presidency and has repeatedly touted his friendship with the Russian dictator —stopped short of condemning Putin for his death.
