There’s a growing list of people who evoke historical Black figures to compare them to people, or actions, that are entirely undeserving of the comparison. It happened again earlier this week.
On Monday’s episode of his Newsweek show “Greg Kelly Reports,” conservative anchor Greg Kelly took shots at the jurors who found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He denied that Trump was found guilty by his “peers” and compared Trump to Emmett Till, of all people.
Suggested Reading
On Monday, Kelly states, “I’ve heard this excuse before. Emmett Till, a 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,” Kelly said. “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.”
Watch the clip below:
This has to be one of the more egregious comparisons to Trump that we’ve seen or heard to date. Besides the fact that Till was a helpless Black Boy and Trump was a billionaire white man, Till’s case was a tragic story of racism that helped fuel the Civil Rights movement.
The main victim in the case, Carolyn Bryant, claimed in 19555 that the 14-year-old boy grabbed and threatened her. But more than 60 years later, she admitted that she was lying.
No matter how much of a controversial figure Trump is, the two situations are not the same. Trump isn’t helpless. Trump wasn’t being discriminated against because of his race. Trump has a wealth of resources with him.
Remember when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misconstrued a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and essentially claimed that he would have loved his ban on books? What about the time when George Santos compared himself to Rosa Parks when discussing how he dealt with Republican naysayers? Or what about the time former President Donald Trump suggested that he was similar to Nelson Mandela?
Kelly’s message was more of the same. And it begs the question: Are they doing it because they believe it? Or just to piss Black folks off?
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.