To paraphrase a famous line from the filmography of one of our president’s least favorite people, Donald Trump can’t handle the truth — about the country, the Constitution, or himself.
If he studied history, the current leader of the free world would discover that the truth will out, and eventual judgment is harsh for those who tried to bend the world to their will, to erase history instead of learning from it.
Ultimately, cruel strongmen end up looking very weak indeed.
However, until the truth comes back to bite them, they can do a lot of damage. And, unfortunately, what Trump can’t handle, he tries to control with the power he now wields, backed by compliant sycophants in the halls of Congress and across powerful institutions.
Using “alternative facts,” Trump has created his own truth, with January providing the perfect opportunity for maximum outrage. He and his followers started the year trying to cast the violent mob that attacked law enforcement and stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “patriots.”
How else could he rationalize pardoning criminals while calling himself the law-and-order president?
Though Trump fancies himself an original thinker, in his recent transgressive tirade attacking the progress that the civil rights movement ushered in, the man who has shown he is interested in leading only selected Americans didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before.
But that doesn’t matter if he says it loud enough for his supporters to get the message.
Trump leaned on the tired rhetoric of the insecure that surfaces every time privilege is threatened. Plus, he got to mark the upcoming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day by trying to grab attention from a legacy he could only dream of earning.
It’s sad how much the president is obsessed with the assassinated civil rights leader, removing the King holiday from the list of admission-free days at national parks, while adding his own birthday.
Talk about a DEI move.
Reliably and divisively, Trump told The New York Times that the civil rights movement that extended America’s promise to all wasn’t fair — to white people, who were “very badly treated.”
While acknowledging civil rights legislation “accomplished some very wonderful things,” Trump said, “it also hurt a lot of people.”
“Reverse discrimination,” he called it.
Trump is old enough to have witnessed this history, the landmark progress that came only after bloody images of brave civil rights activists being beaten and killed made their way from TV screens to the world’s consciousness.
What he knows, however, is how to capitalize on the lingering resentments of those who always need an “other” to blame for life’s disappointments. It beats self-reflection and taking responsibility every time.
After all, even many of those who left the lynchings and cross burnings to others sympathized with the suspicion that sharing the American dream at some point becomes encroachment, and robs them of someone to look down on.
In that interview, Trump’s words provided context for administration policies that weaken enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and any remedies “to rectify the long history of this country denying access to people based on race in every measurable category,” as NAACP president Derrick Johnson put it.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with Andrea Lucas as current chair, has turned its historical mission on its head with a recent video message inviting every “white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex” to file a claim.
Might as well put up a sign that says no woman, minority, person with disability, veteran, member of the LGBT community or other underrepresented American need apply.
No surprise that Trump found himself on the wrong side of civil rights history. There was nothing “reverse” about it when, in the 1970s, the Justice Department charged the real estate company Trump and his father ran with locking out well-qualified prospective renters because of skin color. The company settled without admitting guilt.
The war on truth inevitably leads to museums, and the Smithsonian, where the Trump administration’s propaganda machine is working overtime. The institution is being pressured to run all exhibits through a MAGA lens, though I was surprised when the wall text next to a new portrait of the president in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington scrubbed mention of his two impeachments.
I mean, maybe he can’t match President Obama in eloquence, achievement or Nobel Prize count, but with those impeachments under his belt, at least Trump could brag that he beat Obama in something.
What Trump doesn’t seem to realize is that text removed can be restored. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is extremely popular, and won’t come down as easily as the East Wing of the White House — not without a fight.
And when the building is no more, the achievements and sacrifices honored will live on in books, documents and stories shared and passed down through generations.
I can personally attest to that.
Americans know the truths that all the men, women and children in the civil rights movement elevated, against enormous odds, truths that can withstand any malicious words from the temporary occupant of the White House.
King’s prescient prescription for a better world proves how much he knew and how little some current leaders understand: “We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the pressing urgencies of the great cause of freedom.”
Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.
Reprinted with permission from Roll Call
