Trump Claims He’s Done More For Blacks Than Any President Besides Lincoln

Trump told Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner that he believes he has done the most good for black Americans, with the exception of Lincoln, saying that while “[Lincoln] did good, although it’s always questionable.”

Faulker, a black woman, stopped the president to point out that black Americans “are free now,” to which Trump replied, “You understand what I mean. So I’m going to take a pass on Honest Abe, as we call him,” and did not appear to clarify what was “questionable” about Lincoln.

Trump said he passed criminal justice reform, saying “nobody else could have done it,” but adding that he didn’t “get a lot of notoriety in the fact that people I did it for then go on television and thank everybody but me, and they needed me to get it done.”

The president appears to be taking credit for the First Step Act, a sweeping bipartisan criminal justice reform bill he signed into law in 2018.

Trump also said he provided long-term funding for historically black colleges and universities in his three years in office, and has helped redirect resources to opportunity zones, or low-income areas where new investments may be eligible for tax breaks.