What did Donald Trump do today?
He tried to add Martin Luther King, Jr., to his impeachment defense team.
Trump spent most of the day dedicated to honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., dealing with his forthcoming impeachment trial. He attacked Democrats for failing to call John Bolton to testify during their impeachment hearings—because Trump himself claimed a fictional privilege of "absolute immunity" and threatened to file lawsuits that would outlast his term as president to prevent Bolton from taking the stand. He also saw his allies in the Senate move to adopt rules that would sideline any damaging witnesses or evidence—even testimony and evidence that the House did manage to pry loose.
But he did acknowledge King twice. He took a trip to the King Memorial spent at least one full minute in the presence of the monument. The press pool was hustled away from the scene within two minutes, and the motorcade spent a total of nine minutes on site. Trump did not speak or take questions.
He also invoked King via his surrogate Kellyanne Conway. Asked how Trump was spending the holiday—the nine-minute trip had not been announced at that point—Conway responded:
Well, I can tell you the president... agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for, and agreed with for many years – including unity and equality, and he’s not the one trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that is really very shameful at this point. I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged with bribery, extortion, high crimes and misdemeanors. And I think that anybody who cares about ‘and justice for all’ on today or any day of the year will appreciate the fact that the president will have a full throttle defense on the facts, and everybody should have that.
Trump has also said that even being investigated for abuse of power and trying to cover it up is like a "lynching." But he does have a track record on civil rights. It includes:
- saying that studying the history of slavery is a "racism witch hunt"
- saying that people living in mostly black or Latino neighborhoods are "in hell"
- calling self-described white nationalist protestors chanting Nazi slogans and "Jews will not replace us" "very fine people"
- saying that race-based terrorism and white nationalism is not a "serious problem" in the United States
- refused to promise that he'd never been caught on tape using racial slurs
- continuing to call for the execution of five black and Latino men after they'd been cleared by DNA evidence of rape and assault charges
- perpetuating the "birther" hoax that said the United States' first black president wasn't really an American at all
- saying of Central and South American refugees, "These aren't people. These are animals"
- accusing Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis of not respecting the civil rights movement
- demanding that black employees of his casinos be kept away from counting money
- pitching a "race war" season of The Apprentice
- accusing Native American tribes of faking their ancestry and associating with organized crime in an attempt to keep them from opening casinos that would compete with his
- getting the United States sanctioned by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
- leaving terrorist acts committed by white nationalists or against people of color off an official list of terrorist acts
Why does this matter?
- It's pretty safe to say that Martin Luther King's "vision" didn't involve Trump at all, unless King had heard early reports of black applicants being screened out of Trump's apartments.
- It's not a great look for the most powerful man in the world to be playing the victim to this extent.