Former President Donald Trump touted being the only living president not descended from slaveholders in a Wednesday Truth Social post.’
Reuters reported on political elites being descendants of slaveowners in the piece, “More than 100 U.S. political elites have family links to slavery.” (RELATED: CNN Obtains Audio Of Trump Discussing Classified Documents And ‘Secret Information’)
Trump cited the report, which concluded that “every living former president” except Trump and including former President Barack Obama, is a direct descendant of a slaveholder.
“‘President Joe Biden and every living President—except Donald Trump—are direct descendants of slaveholders: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and—through his white mother’s side—Barack Obama…’ Reuters. I hope that every African American in our Country is reading this right now. REMEMBER!”
The former president’s family arrived in the U.S. years after slavery had been abolished in 1865. His mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland in Nov. 1929. The former president’s paternal grandfather Fredrick Trump arrived from the Bavarian city of Kallstadt between the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The unemployment rate among black Americans dropped significantly during the Trump administration. It fell from 8.4 percent to 7.4 percent between July 2016 and 2017, hitting lower rates than during the Obama administration.
Harvard researcher Henry Lewis Gates told the outlet that the study was “not another chapter in the blame game,” but rather a “learning opportunity for each individual” whose ancestors were named in the report.