O'Rourke Didn’t Say Trump is More Racist Than Slaveholders
The Claim
Former Representative Beto O’Rourke said that President Donald Trump is more racist than slaveholders.
News posted on
Emerging story
In a clip from a DNC speech in August 2020, O'Rourke said that Trump is the most racist president in U.S. history.
Some outlets and many social media users believe this implies that, since some presidents owned enslaved persons, O’Rourke claimed that Trump is more racist than slaveholders.
The claim soon went viral on social media.
Misbar’s Analysis
This headline is intentionally misleading. Misbar found that most articles on the subject source an article on Breitbart (an alt-right news organization). The article states that O’Rourke “suggested” that Trump is more racist than slaveholders. This is due to a snippet in his speech to the DNC in which he said that Trump is “the most destructive, hateful, racist president in the history of this country who is literally tearing apart the fabric of the United States of America.” Suggesting and saying are two quite different things, but many social media users made the mistake of assuming that they are the same thing.
Last year, O'Rourke said that Trump is the most racist president in “modern” history.
It seems that O’Rourke was implying "modern" history in his most recent speech as well. This indicates that he does not believe that Trump is more racist than slaveholders, although it could be argued that the former representative should be more deliberate in his word choice.
