Day: July 20, 2019

That’s a pretty unlikely group. What could they have in common? The day was October 27, 1986, and they were all honored by the Ellis Island Honors Society for different reasons, all centered around their ethnic origins, as a celebration of the American diversity symbolized by Ellis Island. Trump was chosen as a man of German heritage who benefited New York City as a developer.

An Oct. 16, 1986, New York Times article lists Trump as a recipient, with ‘German, developer’ alongside his name. ”

(Hillary Clinton has also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.)

Hilariously enough, a Facebook meme has claimed that the society was honoring Trump for his contributions to the black community! You can’t get much farther from the truth. In reality, the Trumps’ most significant contribution to the black community was to refuse to rent to them. An undercover government agent caught the Trumps red-handed in blatant discrimination. When cornered by the feds, Trump’s manager on the scene said, “I’m only doing what my boss told me to do — I am not allowed to rent to black tenants.”

Trump has disingenuously claimed that he settled the case for “zero with no admission of liability,” which conveniently twists the intent of the actual settlement, which read “without adjudication of the merit and without any admission as to the existence or absence of liability,” and which forced the Trump organization to jump through many hoops to prove that it intended to comply with the law. In layman’s terms, the ruling was “We won’t talk about the past at all. The important thing is that you do the following in the future.”

So it’s not likely that a guy caught red-handed practicing racist housing discrimination would be given an award for his progressive racial policies!