Former president and now-convicted felon Donald Trump has been compared to prominent historical figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ. Now, someone has tactlessly likened him to Emmett Till.
Newsmax host Greg Kelly did so while criticizing the media’s portrayal of Trump’s hush money trial.
Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their romantic ties.
Kelly specifically took issue with how some pundits and officials phrased that Trump was convicted by a “jury of his peers” and argued that Trump is peerless as a former president.
He tried to exemplify his point by clumsily comparing Trump’s trial to the trial of two white men who were acquitted for the gruesome murder of Emmett Till.
“I’ve heard this excuse before,” Kelly said Monday, on his show, said Greg Kelly Reports. “Emmett Till, young man, beaten to death all the way back in the 1950s. What did he do? He said hello to a white woman, something like that. And an all-white mob beat him to death and three people, I believe, were arrested. And the jury said, ‘We don’t see no problem here,’ and let him go, right?
“A jury of the accusers’ peers found nothing to see here. So jury, I’m told, gets it wrong sometimes. Seems to be a lot of people who think that a lot of murderers were let free that day. All right, so we’ve seen this before,” Kelly continued.
In 1955, Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured, and lynched by white men in Mississippi after he was accused of flirting with a white woman. The men who were acquitted later bragged about their roles in the abduction and killing to a magazine journalist. The 14-year-old’s murder was a seminal moment in the civil rights movement.
Trump and his allies have likened his criminal charges and trials with witchhunts, pegging the former president as an innocent martyr facing an unjust system.
One of his most ardent supporters, U.S. House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has compared Trump to Jesus Christ multiple times. The most recent instance happened last week at a rally in Las Vegas. During her remarks, she said, “Oh, Trump is a convicted felon? Well, you wanna know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence compared Trump to Martin Luther King Jr. in 2019 when he went on on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and drew parallels between King’s calls for justice to Trump’s demands for funding to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico.
“One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, ‘Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,’” Pence said. “You think of how he changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process, to become a more perfect union.That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on Congress to do.”
Trump has also likened himself to Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill.
Kelly was slammed on social media for comparing Trump to a Black boy who was lynched in the 1950s.
“GREG KELLY YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED! HOW DARE YOU!!!! The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 brought nationwide attention to the racial violence and injustice prevalent in Mississippi,” one X user wrote.
“Even the insinuation of a comparison makes Greg Kelly, the dumbest mother f–k-r on the planet and Newsmax, a channel for the lobotomized,” another X user wrote.
