An explosive new report on American politicians and their ties to the trans-Atlantic slave trade has shocked many across the country, revealing names of U.S. presidents, senators, and members of The House of Representatives whose families owned slaves.
Of all the living people to hold the office of president of the United States, only one has no ties to American slavery. It is not the first African-American to assume the office, Barack Obama, but his successor Donald J. Trump.
After getting wind of that historical factoid, the immediate past commander-in-chief could not wait to share it with his followers and package it as a campaign to attract Black supporters.
He posted an excerpt from the report on his social media platform Truth Social, writing, “President Joe Biden and every living former U.S. 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. Trump’s ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished.”
However, he tacked on at the end a message for Black people, “I hope that every African American in our country is reading this right now. REMEMBER!”
People took to social media to comment on the idea that Trump’s family was not involved in the American slave trade, digging deeper into his family tree to show there still was a history of exploitation of the vulnerable and possibly human trafficking.
While the family did not benefit from slavery after arriving in the country, his father did engage in the anti-Black terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan that emerged after the end of the institution.
According to MSNBC, Trump is a descendant of European immigrants. His German progenitors came to the country after slavery was abolished in 1865.
Interestingly enough, during the time when most of Europe, the West Indies, and both the continents in the Americas exploited African bodies for free labor, Germany was not a country. It was not founded until 1871.
Prussia and the political government called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (HRE), the official European nationalities of that area, did steal people from Africa (and the Middle East) and forced them into labor, only liberating them if they were baptized into the faith, according to the essay, “There Are No Slaves in Prussia” by Rebekka Von Mallinckrodt in the book “Slavery Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe, 1680-1850.”
