National

Analysis | Trump issues many, many falsehoods at Black journalists’ convention

July 31, 2024

“You know, nobody died that day, you do know that? But people died in Seattle. Nobody died, but people died in Minneapolis. You know, people died in Minneapolis, and nothing happens. And nobody ever talks and nothing happens to those people. But you went after the J6 people with a vengeance.”

— Donald Trump, in a conversation at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, July 31

In his half-hour sit-down with three journalists at NABJ, the former president and Republican presidential nominee unleashed his usual litany of falsehoods, ranging from a phony story about the ex-governor of Virginia executing a baby after birth to an absurd claim that he “saved” historically Black colleges and universities. To a Black audience, he yet again bragged he did more for Blacks than any president since Abraham Lincoln — earning the instant rejoinder (which he ignored) from ABC News’ Rachel Scott: “Better than President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act?”

Rather than repeat ourselves, we have provided links to previous fact checks at the end of this report.

Instead we will focus on a fresh claim he made. When asked about pardoning people convicted of violence during the Jan. 6 attacks — he said he would — he resorted to whataboutism. He asserted that people died in Seattle and Minneapolis during the social justice protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020 — and nothing happened to those people.

The Facts

As part of his argument, Trump falsely claimed that “nobody died.” A Senate report said that “seven individuals, including three law enforcement officers, ultimately lost their lives” in connection with the attack, four of them “that day.” Four were Trump supporters — one shot by a U.S. Capitol police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window that led to the Speaker’s Lobby, two of heart attacks and one from amphetamine intoxication. Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, collapsed at his desk after the attack and died a day later. The District’s chief medical examiner concluded that Sicknick had suffered two strokes nearly eight hours after being sprayed with a chemical irritant. Two other officers committed suicide within days of the attack.

Trump also claimed that just a few days ago there was a “horrible attack on the Capitol” by pro–Palestinian protesters — and “they fought with them much more openly than I saw on January 6th.” That’s not true. “Though most demonstrators walked and chanted peacefully, there were some clashes with law enforcement, and D.C. police and Capitol Police said they arrested 15 people in total. The U.S. Park Police arrested eight people,” The Washington Post reported. Trump spoke at length about the tragedy of “incredible monuments, bells, lions, all these magnificent limestone and granite with red paint.” The vandalism took place not at the Capitol but near Union Station — appearing on the Christopher Columbus memorial fountain and Freedom Bell, a reproduction of the Liberty Bell — and National Park Service officials said they would be cleaned within three days, despite Trump’s saying of the defacement: “You’ll see it in a hundred years from now.”

An American flag was also burned, earning condemnation from Trump’s rival for the presidency, vice president Kamala Harris.

Here’s what happened in Seattle and Minneapolis. The information on deaths during the protests came from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit. The organization found that the overwhelming majority of the 9,000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations were peaceful, but that 11 people were killed while participating in the protests and an additional 14 died in incidents linked to them.

Two people were killed, according to ACLED. Summer Taylor, a Black Lives Matter activist, died when a car rammed into the protests. Another person, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., was shot in an incident that ACLED said was tied to the broader unrest. (Another fatal shooting of a teen was not connected, ACLED concluded.)

Dawit Kelete, 30, who drove into the protest on July 4, 2020, killing Taylor and seriously injuring another person, was sentenced to 78 months in jail. The judge said that while there was no evidence he hit the protesters intentionally, his conduct was “extremely reckless.”

Mays died in the early morning hours of June 29, 2020, while driving a stolen Jeep in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, which protesters occupied for three weeks after police abandoned the area. Mays lived in San Diego, but traveled to Seattle to be part of history, his family said. The incident led the city to shut down the protest zone.

No one has been charged in Mays’s death. Mays’s father has filed a wrongful-death suit against the city for allowing “lawlessness to reign.”

One person was killed, according to ACLED. The Max It Pawn Shop was set on fire during protests on May 28, 2020, and then two months later, police discovered a charred body in the wreckage. Surveillance video footage showed Montez Terriel Lee, 26, pouring an accelerant around the pawnshop and lighting it on fire. Lee was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.