Former President and 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the New England Sports Center in Derry, New Hampshire, on October 23, 2023. | Source: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Getty
It’s difficult not to assume that when white people and Republicans compare themselves to iconic Black civil rights leaders they’re not intentionally gaslighting Black people. That has to be the case, right? There is just no way these people spend so much time using their platforms to deny systemic racism only to turn around and liken themselves to people who are known for their fights against systemic racism unless their intent is to get under Black people’s skin figuratively and metaphorically. Between white conservatives constantly invoking their whitewashed version of Martin Luther King, comparing themselves to Rosa Parks and co-opting the “two Americas” narrative—which they dismiss as critical race theory “wokeness” whenever Black people point it out—it’s just plainly clear these people are playing around in our faces while pretending it’s white Republicans who are now under the Jim Crow gun.
Anyway, Donald Trump is out here calling himself Nelson Mandela.
From CNN:
Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, sought to paint himself as a victim of political persecution, telling a crowd of supporters at a Derry, New Hampshire, rally, “I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason.”
The remark from Trump, who has been indicted four times and faces 91 criminal charges across the cases, came after he filed to appear on the presidential ballot in New Hampshire.
The former president’s self-comparison to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-apartheid activist builds on his claim at an Iowa campaign event last week that he would be “willing to go to jail, if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again.”
First of all, let’s just analyze this quote: “I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason.”
Yeah—Mandela went to prison for 27 years because he led an armed resistance against the powers that be in apartheid South Africa. If Trump goes to jail, it will be because he was found guilty of mishandling classified documents or because he’s finally being held accountable for his temper tantrum-turned-alleged conspiracy to overturn the presidential race that he legally lost. Not only is Trump laughably comparing himself to a revolutionary who fought real oppression (not to mention the same brand of white nationalism that MAGA represents), but he’s pretending to do so in the name of “democracy,” which he demonstrably tried to circumvent in order to remain in power after he was voted out.
Seriously, if Trump is going to compare himself to anyone, it should be the people who put Mandela in prison, not the man himself.
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