Trump denies accusations of racism. At the same time, he attacks Barack Obama

Pastor Jesse Jackson was a good man and a force of nature, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, remembering the deceased African-American activist. The president emphasized that despite being accused of racism, he always supported Jackson, who – as he noted – hated Barack Obama.

“I knew him well long before I became president. He was a good man, with personality, persistence and street instincts,” Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social. The president emphasized that for years he had provided offices for Jackson's organization, the Rainbow Coalition, in his building on Wall Street in New York.

The president used the condolence post to defend himself against accusations of racismwriting that “despite being falsely and persistently called a racist by scoundrels and lunatics on the radical left,” he was always willing to support Jackson.

The president also listed his achievements in areas close to Jackson, which he had asked for and which – according to Trump – no other president had dared to undertake. This is about criminal justice reform and funding for African American colleges and universities (HBCUs). Trump also noted that Jackson “had a lot to do with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a man Jesse couldn't stand.”

He loved his family and my deepest sympathies and condolences go to them. We will miss him! – the president concluded the entry.

Jesse Jackson died on Tuesday at the age of 84. He was an icon of the fight for civil rights of black people in the United States and a close associate of Martin Luther King. After his assassination in 1968, he became one of the most important figures of the American civil rights movement. In the 1980s, he was also a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, becoming the first African American to achieve significant success in the presidential primaries.

In 2017, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and in 2025, progressive supranuclear palsy was confirmed. In the last months of his life he was hospitalized.

From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)

osk/mal/