Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday insisted that President Donald Trump is a “civil-rights leader,” pointing to low African-American unemployment to make his case.
The morning after Martin Luther King Day, the former Celebrity Apprentice star reacted to Trump’s arrival at the economic summit in Davos, telling the hosts of Fox & Friends that he feels “awful” for the president because he’s dealing with impeachment during his trip.
“This is an economic summit, the American economy is the envy of the world,” he declared. “I call him, to great controversy, a civil-rights leader, especially yesterday on Martin Luther King Day.”
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“Because why?” Rivera continued. “African American unemployment—lowest it’s ever been. Latino unemployment—lowest it’s ever been. The rising tide, the rising tide is lifting all boats, we should be celebrating, instead he’s fighting this—this, you know, cage match.”
Later on in the program, Fox Business host Charles Payne essentially parroted Rivera’s assertion, adding that the president couldn’t be racist since wages for people of color have risen.
The president, meanwhile, also touted minority jobs numbers on MLK Day, basically equating labor participation with civil rights.
Rivera currently likening Trump to MLK because blacks and Latinos have jobs somewhat flies in the face of some of his recent comments on the president’s inflammatory racial rhetoric. After Trump called on Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they came from last summer, Rivera pleaded with the president to “steer clear of language that’s xenophobic even racist.”
