{"id":476792,"date":"2026-02-19T00:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/476792\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T00:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T00:26:11","slug":"trump-hosts-black-history-month-reception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/476792\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump hosts Black History Month reception"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump hosted a White House reception for Black History Month on Wednesday, less than two weeks after he sparked a bipartisan outcry by posting a racist video on social media that depicted former President Barack Obama<\/a> and his wife, Michelle Obama<\/a>, as primates in a jungle.<\/p>\n

Trump on Wednesday didn\u2019t reference the video, which he deleted after a widespread backlash but said he won\u2019t apologize for posting. He also did not reference Barack Obama, the nation\u2019s first Black president, but spoke of other history-making Black Americans. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe celebrate Black History Month. We honor the memory of those who came before us by continuing their legacy,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Trump name-checked prominent Black Americans among his supporters, including boxer Mike Tyson, whom Trump praised for defending him against accusations of racism, and rapper Nicki Minaj, whose skin he praised as \u201cso beautiful\u201d while commenting on how long her fingernails were. <\/p>\n

The Republican president brought onstage several members of his administration, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs you look out upon this sea of Black Americans, this president hears you. This president cares for you. Don\u2019t let anyone tell you that this president right here, Donald Trump has not \u2014 is not for Black America,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBecause he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump listed ways he said his policies benefited Black Americans, including the law he signed last year eliminating federal income taxes on tips and his deployment of National Guard troops \u201cto bring back safety\u201d in cities with large populations of Black residents, such as Washington, New Orleans and Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

The reception came the day after Trump proclaimed in another social media post that he has been \u201cfalsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left,\u201d in a message that was meant to pay tribute to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died Tuesday. <\/p>\n

In response to a question about the post, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier Wednesday: \u201cThere is a lot this president has done for all Americans, regardless of race. And he has absolutely been falsely called and smeared as a racist.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump has long recognized Black History Month as president, but his policies and rhetoric while in office often contradict celebrations of diversity and the contributions of Black Americans.<\/p>\n

Trump has targeted the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that helped many Black Americans find jobs in both the federal government and a variety of private industries over the last several decades. He has called DEI programs \u201cdiscrimination,\u201d and he has pushed to eradicate them from the government and put pressure on the private sector to do the same.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Trump has painted himself as champion of historically Black colleges and universities. The White House on Wednesday highlighted the Trump administration\u2019s move last year to steer $500 million to HBCUs. The one-time boost largely came from federal money taken away from colleges serving large shares of Hispanic students. The award for HBCUs came days after the Education Department pulled $350 million from other grant programs targeting colleges with certain percentages of Hispanic students and other minority groups. The Trump administration said those grant programs were unconstitutional. <\/p>\n

Trump began his second term by claiming some African American history lessons are meant to indoctrinate people into hating the country. He issued an executive order \u201crestoring truth and sanity to American history,\u201d which the administration used to scrub historical information from national parks that \u201cinappropriately disparage Americans past or living,\u201d including Black history markers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shortly after beginning his second term, Trump issued a proclamation recognizing February as Black History Month as the Defense Department was declaring<\/a> that official resources will no longer be used to mark cultural awareness<\/a> months. <\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s Black History Month<\/a> reception last year<\/a> was also held in the wake of another executive order<\/a> that ended the federal government\u2019s diversity, equity and inclusion programs.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Collin Binkley in Washington and Graham Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump hosted a White House reception for Black History Month on Wednesday, less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[216782,23,8833,8650,3505,12,793,3138,3073,8635,565,17153,25248,23193,3,13028,111,3766,15754,75774,57672,21,792,19,22,20,25,24,800],"class_list":["post-476792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-alice-marie-johnson","tag-america","tag-barack-obama","tag-black-experience","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-indictments","tag-jesse-jackson","tag-jr","tag-karoline-leavitt","tag-michelle-obama","tag-mike-tyson","tag-news","tag-nicki-minaj","tag-politics","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-racism","tag-scott-turner","tag-u-s-national-guard","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}