President Donald Trump, that evil racist who hates black people and pretty much anyone whose skin is a shade darker than standard printer paper, just posthumously pardoned a black boxer arrested in 1912 for the crime of driving a white woman across state lines.
I know, right? What a terrible, prejudiced bigot.
Jack Johnson, who's been dead more than 70 years now, was the first black boxer to win the world heavyweight title back in 1908. He also became the center of a national civil rights debate when he was arrested four years later for violating the White Slave Traffic Act – all for driving across state lines with his white girlfriend, Lucille Cameron. Cameron and Johnson later married.
After fleeing to Europe for seven years, Johnson finally returned to the U.S., surrendered himself at the border, and ended up serving 10 months in prison.
For driving with a white girl across state lines.
Linda Haywood, Johnson's great-great niece, has fought for Johnson’s pardon for years. She’d even petitioned both the Bush administration and the Obama administration - the latter of which reportedly considered a pardon but didn't actually grant one - to clear Johnson’s name, but with no success.
That is, until Trump.
Who’s clearly a racist.
Never one to abandon the race-baiting soapbox, Vox Media described Trump's move as "a symbolic act of solidarity with people of color mistreated by the criminal justice system" that "seems a little off-brand for Trump."
"But Johnson’s case is far enough back in time — and has enough support from old, white, male, conservative boxing fans — that moving forward was unlikely to trouble anyone in Trump’s base," Vox argued.
Say what you want, libs. The simple truth is that Obama had eight years in office to grant a very simple pardon to a dead black man who'd been clearly wronged by the U.S. justice system during his lifetime. And he didn't. Trump did.
So suck on those lemons.