In the mind of Donald Trump there are a great many things nobody knows about but him—that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, that designing a health care system for a country of 330 million people would be complicated, that the pandemic currently ravaging the nation “could be horrible” or “maybe good.” As a rule, these are things that most people did, in fact, know already, but that he has only recently learned.
It is safe to assume, then, that the president of the United States was only recently made aware of Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in America. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Thursday, Trump did what he often does with things he has just learned about: he acts like they’re new to everyone, and takes credit for them. “I did something good,” he told the outlet. “I made Juneteenth very famous…It’s actually an important event, an important time,” he continued. “But nobody had ever heard of it.”
When Trump first announced that his rally would take place on June 19—in Tulsa, the site of one of the worst racist massacres in American history, no less—he was roundly criticized. At first, he claimed the event was intended as a “celebration” of Juneteenth, then pushed the date back “out of respect” after hearing from Black “friends” and “supporters” and taking their wishes into account. While the initial location and date seemed like a dog-whistle to the MAGA faithful amid a national reckoning over racism, an equally plausible explanation was that Trump was ignorant of the significance of the date. Pulling out the old “nobody had ever heard of it” line with the Wall Street Journal might be confirmation of the latter.
On this occasion, however, Trump was immediately confronted with evidence that other people had, in fact, heard of the holiday. He paused the Journal interview to ask an aide if she’d heard of Juneteenth, and she informed him that his own administration had, in fact, released a statement commemorating the holiday last year. “Oh really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?” Trump said. “OK, OK. Good.”
Despite not being aware of a pivotal holiday for Black Americans, the president recently claimed to have “done more for the Black community than any other president”—with the possible exception, he said in a Fox News interview with Harris Faulkner last week, of Abraham Lincoln, “Honest Abe as we call him.”
“He did good,” Trump said of Lincoln. “Although it’s always questionable, you know—in other words, the end result.”
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