Days after posting a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, Donald Trump used the death of Rev. Jesse Jackson to claim the civil rights leader “could not stand” the former president—a characterization Jackson is now unable to dispute.
“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him. He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday, hours after the 84-year-old icon’s passing.
Trump then pivoted to himself, denying accusations of racism in the same breath. “Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way.”
The timing is remarkable. Trump’s “I’m not racist” defense comes less than a week after he posted the Obama ape video, which stayed up for more than 12 hours before the White House quietly deleted it. He later admitted he approved it and refused to apologize.
Trump’s claim that Jackson despised Obama also doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. Yes, a hot mic caught Jackson in 2008 saying he wanted to “cut his nuts off” after Obama made comments about absentee fathers in the Black community. Jackson apologized for the remark.
What Trump conveniently leaves out: Jackson was famously photographed weeping with joy on election night 2008 when Obama won. He publicly described Obama as running “the last lap” of the struggle for Black political empowerment. Frustration and support can coexist—but “could not stand” is a lie.
Trump’s history with race is long and documented. In 1973, the Justice Department sued his company for allegedly refusing to rent to Black tenants. In 1989, he took out newspaper ads demanding the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers—the Central Park Five—and continued defending his stance even after they were exonerated.
Former employees at Trump’s casinos alleged discriminatory treatment of Black workers throughout the 1990s, including claims that managers were told to remove Black staff from the floor when certain high-profile clients visited.
Trump spent years pushing the birther conspiracy that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to an American citizen.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump described Black neighborhoods as “violent hellholes.” After the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, he said there were “very fine people on both sides.”
The White House has not commented on the Jackson post.