Is President Trump a Racist?

Democrats often assert that President Trump is a ‘racist’. The problem is that all of the examples that they commonly give to back up that claim are false. Donald Trump has been a public figure, liked by New York liberals and other celebrities, for the better part of half a century. No one was calling him a racist until he wanted to run for President as a Republican. Republicans are used to being falsely accused of racism. It happens every day. For eight years or so, in general, any criticism of President Obama was considered to be racist almost by definition because he is black. In every circumstance, they imagined that if Obama were white, he would not be facing the associated criticism. Questioning the workability or costs of Obamacare for example were often met with charges that the critic “could not stand to see a black man in the White House.” Whether the charge of racism was sincere or not, it usually worked to shut down any debate. Charles Rangel once said that Republicans talking about tax cuts was code for the ‘n-word.’ Joe Biden told a black audience that Republicans want to “put y’all back in chains.” Hillary Clinton expanded the race card to include all kinds of other false charges against tens of millions of Americans when she said half of Trump supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and then for good measure to make sure to include all of those other ‘deplorable’ things Republicans are, she threw in the catch-all, “you name it.”

Democrats play race cards so reflexively, they throw them out in situations where they don’t even make sense. In the 2018 Senate race, they said that voting for the actual Hispanic in the race, Ted Cruz, over the 100% white guy, Beto, with the Spanish nick-name, was ‘racist’. They said the reason that many many counties which voted twice for Barack Obama, now voted for Trump instead of another white person had something to do with racism. Van Jones called it a ‘white washing.’ Of course, sexism and misogyny were also at play they said. Anything to avoid looking at the real reasons she lost.

Since the election, there have been a thousand false charges of racism made (documented on WhatHappened.com/tag/fake-racism, as the race card is the Democratic Party’s weapon of choice. Like any drug, after using the race card daily for about a decade, it lost a lot of its power, so in the last few years Democrats had to ‘lace’ it with the phrase ‘white supremacy.’ It’s almost hard to remember but until about four years ago, the term ‘white supremacy’ was rarely used and when it was, it was used almost exclusively in a historical sense referring to a time more than half a century ago when there were actual white supremacists running around (almost all Democrats). Today, the number of actual white supremacists is very close to zero, yet Democrats use that phrase multiple times a day every day, always falsely.

With regard to President Trump, there are a few examples that people always give when asked why they think he is a racist. It is impossible to overstate how often these examples come up. There are individual articles on WhatHappened.com for each of these but here is the quick summary of the debunked myths:

1. Donald Trump questioned if Barack Obama was born in the United States. It seems obvious to people that he would not have done that if Obama was white. However, most people don’t know that the real reason anyone thought Obama was born in Kenya was because two of his own biographies (one for the Harvard Law Review yearbook and one for his book ‘Dreams of My Father’) literally said “Born in Kenya.” So, to claim that Trump is a racist for asking to see his birth certificate is to claim that it is racist to believe Barack Obama about where Barack Obama said he was born, not once but twice. Of course, a white person with two bios saying he was born in another country would be also be questioned. Those bios said “Born in Kenya” for decades and were only changed when people started to ask to see his birth certificate. More details at https://whathappened.com/commentary/was-it-racist-to-question-president-obamas-birthplace/
2. Donald Trump thought the ‘Central Park Five’ were guilty. Why would this make him a racist? The Central Park Five were convicted by two juries which included seven African Americans. If you think Donald Trump is a racist for believing that the Central Park Five were guilty, then you would have to believe that all seven black jurors who convicted them are also racist against black people. The supposed ‘exonerating’ evidence came after Trump’s newspaper ad but it did not really nullify any of the evidence that led to their convictions (such as multiple confessions both to police and acquaintances). The new evidence just proved another person was there also. See https://whathappened.com/commentary/was-it-racist-to-think-the-central-park-five-were-guilty/ for further details.
3. The Charlottesville Lie, which is the idea that President Trump called white supremacists and neo-nazis “very fine people”. This lie is literally central to Joe Biden’s campaign so much so that he cited it as a reason why he wanted to run for President. He repeats it every chance he gets despite it having been debunked numerous times including in https://whathappened.com/commentary/the-charlottesville-lie/. President Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” quote was obviously in reference to people on both sides of the debate for removing the statue of Robert E. Lee. He clearly excluded the white supremacists and neo-nazis that were there too. Trump said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” Trump also said this about the events in Charlottesville, “Racism is evil, and those that cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” Democrats always leave these quotes out of their Charlottesville smear because they disprove the lie that they find useful. Joe Biden either does know he is lying about this or he should know. There is no excuse at this point to keep repeating this lie.
4. President Trump supposedly said something to the effect that “Mexicans are rapists and criminals.” This lie is debunked in https://whathappened.com/commentary/were-trumps-2016-election-comments-about-mexicans-racist/. He was saying the people crossing illegally were not Mexico’s ‘best’ people, implying Mexico has a best and a worst and everything in between, just like every other group of people. The comment about rapists was addressing the unfortunate statistic that up to 80% of the women and girls who make that illegal journey are raped. The comment about crime was addressing the fact that illegal immigrants commit crime at a higher rate than both legal immigrants and non-immigrant citizens.
5. The last point leads to the more general claim that President Trump is a racist and a xenophobe for being against illegal immigration. Republicans are pro-legal immigration and anti-illegal immigration. Democrats intentionally make no distinction between these two things to try to paint Republicans as being anti-immigrant. But it’s simply not true. In 2018, Gallop reported that 158 million people around the world want to immigrate to the United States. Obviously, the U.S. can only absorb a small fraction of those each year and so we, like every other nation, have a process by which people from around the world can apply to legally come here. The United States grants over a million immigrants legal status every year, most of whom are people of color. Illegal immigrants “jump the line” ahead of those 158 million other people trying to do things the right way. Besides being unfair to the people waiting to legally immigrate, illegal immigration causes many well-known problems. Before President Trump, Democrats are all on record as being for border enforcement, hundreds of miles of increased fencing and deportations. President Obama deported more people than President Trump. An easy proof that these positions are not actually racist is to show how all prominent Democrats have made statements so similar to Trump’s that a funny and repeated gag is to read those quotes to college students who think they are Trump quotes and watch them say how ‘racist’, ‘white supremacist’ and ‘xenophobic’ those Democrats (like Barack Obama) are. See https://whathappened.com/commentary/illegal-immigration-the-wall-and-the-kids-in-cages-lie/ for a more thorough discussion of this point including how the Democrat Party “Kids in Cages” talking point is also “very fake news”.
6. Oddly, President Trump was called ‘racist’ as well as an Islamophobe for his 2017 “Travel Ban” from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Democrats lied and continue to lie to this day by calling the temporary travel ban a “Muslim ban.” Incredibly, Joe Biden is still saying in 2020, “I will end the Muslim ban on day one.” There is no “Muslim ban” to end! The travel ban applied to countries, not religions and did not apply to 85% of the world’s Muslims. All of the countries in the ban were exactly the same countries that President Obama put travel restrictions on for the same reasons that Trump did. With any kind of immigration or travel, national security requires that everyone coming into this country needs to be properly vetted and at the time, proper vetting was not possible from those seven countries. The racism charge was even more ridiculous considering no race was being banned or restricted. See https://whathappened.com/commentary/muslim-ban/ for more details.
7. Finally, the charge is frequently made that “white supremacists” vote for Donald Trump, thus proving that he, himself must be a racist. Again, the number of true white supremacists in the country today is microscopically small. There are a few and one prominent one is Richard Spencer who no one pays any attention to except for Democrats because they use his words to smear Trump supporters. He said "Hail Trump" in 2016 for example. He has zero real following but since Democrats love to quote him, irony of ironies, he endorsed Biden in 2020. It turns out that Trump didn’t become a white supremacist like Spencer had hoped. President Trump has nothing to do with these people and has denounced them and their ilk many times. On the other hand, Presidents Clinton and Obama legitimize known racists and Anti-Semites. See https://whathappened.com/commentary/hate-crime-hoaxes-and-blaming-trump-for-anti-semitism/ for more details.

Let’s end with what some prominent African Americans have recently said about President Trump and his alleged racism and what he has accomplished for Black Americans.

NFL legend Herschel Walker at the RNC, “I take it out as a personal insult that people would think I've had a 37 year friendship with a racist... Growing up in the deep South, I've seen racism up close. I know what it is and it isn't Donald Trump.”

Jack Brewer, NFL team captain, college professor, and coach at the RNC, “I know what racism looks like. I've seen it firsthand. In America, it has no resemblance to President Trump and I'm fed up with the way he's portrayed in the media.” Brewer addresses being called an 'Uncle Tom' by Democrats who demand that Black people do as they say or be vilified. “After working as a loyal and motivated advocate for Barack Obama,” Brewer realized nothing really got done. “The president that I voted for twice was approaching the end of his presidency and had still done nothing to pass real criminal justice reform. I then learned that his vice president [Biden] was one of the drafters of the 1994 crime bill that systematically incarcerated millions of black fathers. Eight years came and went. ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ came and went. Two terms of a president who was supposed to look out for Black Americans came and went.” “We were gathered to celebrate the historic achievements that President Trump has secured for black Americans. From resurrecting American inner cities with Opportunity Zones to record-low unemployment, rising wages, criminal justice reform, record-high funding for HBCUs, and fighting for school choice, President Trump has accomplished what Democrat politicians have long promised — and failed — to deliver. That is why I proudly called President Trump the first Black President — not because of the color of his skin, but because of the content of his administration’s victories. He is the first president to have a real agenda for Black America.”

Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece Alveda King on people calling President Trump a racist, “All of that news is absolutely fake.” “He's not a racist, absolutely is not, and the programs that he has moved forward... is helping African Americans.”

Georgia Democrat Vernon Jones wrote a recent article, 'Trump Did More for Black Americans in 4 Years Than Biden Has in Over 40'  When Jones decided to back Trump in 2020, he said, “President Trump's handling of the economy, his support for historically black colleges and his criminal justice initiatives drew me to endorse his campaign. There are a lot of African Americans who clearly see and appreciate he’s doing something that’s never been done before. When you look at the unemployment rates among black Americans before the pandemic, they were at historic lows. That’s just a fact.” “I refuse to be another one of Joe Biden's ‘black friends’. What has he done for black people in this country? Author a crime bill that disproportionately put us behind bars that @realDonaldTrump had to undo?”

Civil Rights figure Clarence Henderson speaking at the RNC. “These achievements demonstrate Donald Trump truly cares about black lives. His policies show his heart. He has done more for black Americans in four years than Joe Biden has done in 50.”

Actor Isaiah Washington praises President Trump for supporting the black agenda far more than President Obama did. “I voted for 44 twice... Not once in 8 years was I given any support regarding Africa or the Black Agenda, but 45 invites me to the WH to celebrate the #FirstStepAct.”

Larry Elder wrote an article titled, “If Trump is 'racist,' he needs to go back to racism school.” Elder runs through all of the things Trump has done which helped the black community showing that if he is a racist, he sure is not acting like one.

Horace Cooper wrote a book called ‘How Trump is Making Black America Great Again: The Untold Story of Black Advancement in the Era of Trump’ “This book goes on to argue that President Donald Trump offers a far better alternative to liberalism for what ails Black America.”

Conclusion: There is no evidence that President Trump is a racist and plenty of evidence to the contrary. President Trump has done more for black Americans than President Obama, Vice President Biden and the entire Democratic Party has in the last several decades.