Trump hails black American holiday after year of praising Nazis and white supremacists

In the statement noting the “weeklong celebration of African American heritage and culture,” the official Trump statement — certainly not written in his voice — tells Americans to “celebrate during this joyous time the richness of the past and look with hope toward a brighter future.”

But in his rhetoric while in office, Trump has used his bully pulpit in a manner that hasn’t been seen in decades, promoting racial division and blatant hatred.

Of course, his campaign was laced with hatred and racism, as he called Mexicans rapists and pushed for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States, only to be repeatedly rebuffed by the courts, who cited his own bigoted tweets against him.

Trump showed in his first year why only 8 percent of black voters supported him (compared to 89 percent for Hillary Clinton, the popular vote winner), after his campaign pitch to them was to ask, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

He used officials from historically black colleges and universities for a White House photo op during Black History Month, promising them he would fund their schools, then quickly dropped the issue.

He described the neo-Nazis who were protesting the removal of a Confederate monument and who killed a young woman as “very fine people.”

He followed up that praise by defending statues that were erected to honor the military figures who fought defend the practice of slavery, gushing that they are “beautiful” monuments that should never be removed.

He used his Twitter account to slam black NFL players who knelt in protest of systematic police abuse and brutality against black people, and argued that they should be punished by white team owners for expressing their points of view.

Trump purged his highest profile black staffer in the White House, reality TV star Omarosa Manigault-Newman, and it came out that Trump has been passing over other black staffers for key positions.

He even promoted a conservative group, just hours after it was revealed that one of its officials sent out messages saying, “I hate blacks.”

Trump is even, through the Department of Justice, trying to stop Harvard and other schools from admitting as many black applicants as they currently are, in a multi-pronged attack against affirmative action.

All of this goes to show that the statement on Kwanzaa and valuing black Americans is nothing but empty rhetoric from Trump. His true deeds and actions show that not only is he echoing his past racism, but that he has gotten worse over time.