Bernice King has responded to former President Donald Trump’s comments on Thursday in which he referred to her father and said his speech brought in the same numbers as King’s famous “I have a dream” speech.
The civil rights leader’s daughter posted her own response on X: “Absolutely not true,” she wrote. “I really wish people would stop using my father as evidence of their errors.”
During a press conference at Mar-a-Largo, Trump said, “Nobody has spoken to a larger audience than I have.” He added, “If you look at Martin Luther King when he gave his speech, his great speech, and if you look at ours: same situation, same everything, same number of people.”
Trump’s comment was prompted by the question of whether his transfer of power was viewed as peaceful, despite the subsequent uprising on January 6.
The former president maintains that those arrested for their participation in the uprising were treated unfairly.
Accordingly NBC News“The January 6 congressional committee estimated the number of people in attendance at Trump at 53,000, about a fifth of the estimated 250,000 people who attended King’s famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”
The NAACP also responded via X: “Not only is this completely false, but more importantly, MLK’s speech was about democracy. Trump’s speech was about tearing it down.” In their post, they published side-by-side pictures of both speeches, in which the viewer can see a significant difference in the audience.
Since it was announced that she would be running on the Democratic ticket, Trump’s campaign team has focused on the election of Vice President Kamala Harris. This was most famously demonstrated during his appearance at the National Association for Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago. During his conference in Mar-a-Largo, Trump said his confidence in the black vote was beginning to waver.
“It’s changing a little bit. I’m getting different voters,” Trump said of the black vote. “You may know that I did well with black voters and I still do. I seem to do very well with black men.” He is not so sure about others: “It’s possible that I don’t do as well with black women, but I seem to do very well with other segments,” he added.
King has had to respond to numerous public statements about her father, most recently about Amy Schumer in connection with the conflict in Palestine and Israel.