What do you get when Donald Trump has to talk about Black History Month? Well, insults to the media, of course—as true as “How do you know he’s lying? His lips are moving“ is of Trump, you could equally replace “lying” with “complaining about the media.” But once Trump got past the obligatory rehashing of how a reporter inaccurately reported that Trump had moved a statue of Martin Luther King (and then quickly corrected and apologized), we get to the good stuff:
Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.
Translation: “This morning I learned the name Frederick Douglass, and if he has risen to my notice, he must be pretty great.” Can someone please ask him who Frederick Douglass was and what amazing job he did? Please?
As it happens, Douglass had some things to say about immigration:
There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity.
He really did do an amazing job.
Among the other stalwarts of black history Trump took a moment to recognize: his own aide Omarosa Manigault. So he really hit the high points.