GLAAD has documented the history of Donald Trump on LGBTQ issues, including anti-Black policies and efforts to restrict Black progress in America decades before and during his presidency. Trump’s full anti-LGBTQ record is available on GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Tracker. Racial equality is a a top issue for LGBTQ voters according to GLAAD’s Voter Poll, and an ongoing concern for Black voters, Black LGBTQ voters, allies, and all people of color and faiths. Trump’s record on race includes the below.
Post-presidency:
- 2024—During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump falsely claimed he’d “been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.” He also questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ heritage, saying, “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now, she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said.
- 2024—Trump claimed that Black people like him because he has faced discrimination in the legal system, which is something they can relate to. Trump said Black Americans showcased their support for him through their embrace of merchandise emblazoned with his mug shot.
- 2024—If re-elected, Trump has promised to fuel mass incarceration, encourage law enforcement to engage in unconstitutional policing practices, and expand the death penalty. These expected policies will have an outsized impact on marginalized communities, especially the Black community, which is far more likely to experience police abuse.
- 2023—Trump has repeatedly said undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” language echoing the rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. The phrase “poisoning the blood of our country” has a deep racist and antisemitic history, and the comments come as some Republicans have openly endorsed the once-fringe and racist “white replacement theory.”
Presidency (2017–2021)
- 2020—Thousands of protestors demanding justice for George Floyd and against racism and police brutality are cleared by coordinated militarized crackdown in the park in front of the White House. President Trump uses law enforcement officers from multiple agencies to secure his walk to St. John’s Church to hold up a Bible (pictured), surrounded by five white advisers, for a campaign photo op. Religious leaders describe the actions as hypocritical and obscene.
- 2020—In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.
- 2020—After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.
- 2020—He ordered aides to revamp racial sensitivity training at federal agencies so that it no longer refers to “White privilege.”
- 2020—Trump has condemned Black Lives Matter as a “symbol of hate” while defending armed White militants who entered the Michigan Capitol, right-wing activists who waved weapons from pickup trucks in Portland, and a White teen who shot and killed two protesters in Wisconsin.
- 2020—Georgia election worker ‘terrorized’ by threats after 2020 election– a mob gathered at the home of former Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, a Black woman after allies of the then-Republican president falsely accused her of helping to steal the 2020 election and referred to her by name as a “professional vote scammer.”
- 2020—Trump revived his birtherism saying that Kamala Harris, who’s Black and of South Asian descent, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to be vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate.
- 2020—Trump called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” The World Health Organization advises against linking a virus to any particular region, which can lead to stigma.
- 2019— Trump complained about the impeachment inquiry and compared it to a lynching, infuriating many Blacks and Democrats.
- 2018—In the week after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump repeatedly said that “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued — suggesting that the white supremacist protesters were morally equivalent to counter-protesters who stood against racism. He also said that there were “some very fine people” among the white supremacists.
- 2018—Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then reportedly suggested that the U.S. should take more people from countries like Norway.
- 2017—Trump tweeted that several Black and brown members of Congress — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — are “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to those countries. Three of the four members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the U.S.
- 2017—Trump repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas,” using her controversial—and later walked-back—claims to Native American heritage as a punchline.
- 2017—Trump signs an executive order banning Syrian refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) for 90 days. The ban went into effect immediately on a Friday afternoon, leading to chaos and confusion at airports across the nation and leaving many people detained. Large protests were held at dozens of prominent international airports in the U.S.
- 2017—Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who, by kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.
- 2017—Trump reportedly said that people who came to the U.S. from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and he lamented that people who came to the U.S. from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America. The White House denied that Trump ever made these comments.
Pre-presidency:
- 2016—Trump appointed Steve Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News — a media website responsible for spreading anti-Muslim content — as CEO of the Trump campaign. He also appointed General Mike Flynn, who has deep ties to the organized anti-Muslim hate movement and once claimed that Islam is a “cancer,” as his (first) National Security Advisor.
- 2016—Trump argued that Judge Gonzalo Curiel—who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit—should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
- 2016—Trying to play up his support among African Americans, he pointed to a black supporter in the crowd and said, “Oh, look at my African American over here. Look at him.”
- 2015—Trump launched his presidential campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists and murderers.” “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
- 2015—In between campaign town halls in Newton, Iowa, candidate Trump said he would “certainly implement” a database system to track Muslims.
- 2015—At a campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump called for the “surveillance of certain mosques,” claiming that he had watched “thousands and thousands of people” cheering on 9/11 as the World Trade Centers came down.
- 2015—At a campaign rally in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Trump announced that he has issued a statement calling for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
- 2015—Trump argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump has never released his own academic records and has taken significant measures to ensure they are not released.
- 2015—In an interview on Fox News, Trump is asked if all Muslims should be banned from the United States. He responds, “There’s a sickness. They’re sick people. There’s a sickness going on. There’s a group of people that is very sick. And we have to figure out the answer. And the Muslims can help us figure out the answer.”
- 2015—Trump pitched his candidacy to African-American voters by presenting them with a stark question: “What the hell do you have to lose?” “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed – what the hell do you have to lose?”
- 2012—Trump tweeted his support of the surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. “NYC’s top cop acted wisely and legally to monitor activities of some in the Muslim community. Vigilance keeps us safe.”
- 2011—Trump created the Birtherism movement in response to Barack Obama’s historic presidency. In a speech at a conservative conference, Trump falsely claimed: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: the people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” In 2016, Trump conceded that Pres. Obama was born in the U.S.
- 2010—During an interview with Late Night host David Letterman, Trump discussed the Park51 Islamic Community Center in Manhattan and suggests the U.S. is at war with Muslims. Letterman asks, “Does this, in fact, suggest that we are officially at war with Muslims?” to which Trump responds, “Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center… somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
- 2005—Trump proposed the idea of a “race war” on his then-popular reality show “The Apprentice” that would feature two teams of successful Black contestants versus a team of successful white contestants in a matchup for the title before a barrage of criticism derailed the idea.
- 2000—In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”
- 1991—A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
- 1989—Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in full-page ads in four New York newspapers, including The New York Times, following a horrific rape case in which five Black and Latino teenagers, then known as the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted. In 2002, the convictions were vacated, which made way for a new name—The Exonerated Five. Trump has refused to apologize.
- 1973—Donald Trump and his father, the late Fred Trump Sr., fought a discrimination lawsuit brought by the Justice Department for their alleged refusal to rent apartments in predominantly white buildings to Black tenants. A settlement that ended the lawsuit did not require the Trumps to acknowledge that discrimination had occurred explicitly — but the government’s description of the settlement said Trump and his father had “failed and neglected” to comply with the Fair Housing Act.
GLAAD’s Voter Poll shows:
- LGBTQ registered voters are highly motivated as the presidential and key congressional campaigns approach, with 94% indicating they are definitely (83%) or probably (11%) voting this November.
- 72% experience negative impacts to their mental health and emotional well-being caused by the current state of political discourse in our country.