• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 17, 2025

On day fifty-one, Trump proclaimed himself the nation's Chief Law Enforcement Officer.

Fun facts:

• In 1868, Congress created the Department of Justice after the Civil War to protect the civil rights of newly emancipated Black Americans and prosecute domestic racist terrorists, especially the rising ranks of the Klu Klux Klan.

• In 1927, Trump's father Fred Trump was one of seven men arrested for participating in a deadly Klu Klux Klan attack at a Memorial Day parade in New York City at which police officers were beaten. According to a report by The New York Times, Fred Trump was arraigned and released on bail, but there was no further report on what happened to his charges and whether he actually was a member of the KKK.

• In 1952, American folk hero Woody Guthrie wrote a song about his racist New York City landlord Fred Trump. It was called "Old Man Trump." He never recorded it, but you can read the lyrics here. I like to think that if Woody had recorded it, it would have been sung to the tune of "This Land Is Your Land."

• In 1973, the Department of Justice filed a civil suit against Fred and Donald Trump for discriminating against people of color in their New York City rental properties.

• In 1975, they settled "The United States v. Trump Management Inc." without an admission of guilt. Attorney Roy Cohn represented them.

• In 1989, Donald Trump bought a full-page ad in all four of New York City's daily newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty following the arrest of five men of color accused of raping a woman in Central Park. The media labeled them the "Central Park Five" and they were ultimately convicted and sent to prison for the crime.

• In 2002, a New York Supreme Court justice vacated their convictions after new evidence proved they didn't commit the crime and the media subsequently re-labeled them the "Exonerated Five." Donald Trump never apologized for his campaign against them.

• In 2017, after Nazis and Klansmen provoked deadly violence at a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Donald Trump told the media "there were "very fine people on both sides," equating the White Supremacists with counter-protesters.

• In 2019, while still serving his first term as president, Trump tweeted that four Congresswomen of color should "go back" to the "totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came," despite all being U.S. citizens and three born in the country.

• In 2024, Trump pumped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail, evoking Nazi-era slogans like "poisoning the blood of our country" and other White Supremacist language.

• On January 20th, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump began his second term by signing an executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship from children born in the United States who were born to parents that are not U.S. citizens. The order has been challenged by federal judges in multiple states who issued injunctions blocking its enforcement because it conflicts with the Constitution's 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.

• On March 14th, during his speech inside the DOJ, Trump opened by boasting of his "all time record" crowd size and went on to proclaim himself "the Chief Law Enforcement Officer," brag about his presidency-to-date, attack his political opponents and especially the media.

Enough with the fun facts. One of the most striking things about Trump's DOJ speech was how strikingly reminiscent it was of the one he gave at CIA headquarters on the first full day of his first term, standing in front of the CIA's Memorial Wall commemorating fallen agents, and boasting about the crowd size of his sparsely attended inauguration and launching a campaign against the mainstream media that has continued until this day.