It’s no secret the left despises Donald Trump.
He’s getting things done and they can’t stand it: appointing conservative judges, cutting taxes, and rolling back burdensome regulations.
The left even hates it when Trump does things they agree with, but Trump’s potential next move could leave oppositionist liberals at a loss for words.
Trump is considering a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, a black boxing legend who suffered vicious racism in the early 20th century.
For the progressives who are so quick to label everything racist and suggest America hasn’t become a significantly more tolerant society, they need to employ an ounce of perspective.
From CNN:
On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he was weighing whether or not to grant a posthumous pardon to boxer Jack Johnson, after it was suggested to him by actor Sylvester Stallone.
“His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial,” Trump tweeted. “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”
Linda Haywood, Johnson’s great-great niece, told CNN in an interview Sunday that she was “elated” when she heard the President was considering a pardon.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘Why does this matter? Who cares? He’s a dead man. He’s not going to know,” Haywood, 62, said.
“While that may be true, he still has living descendants. It matters to us.”
Who was the boxing legend Jack Johnson, and why would the President give him a pardon?
Born in March 1878 in Galveston, Texas, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Johnson became the first black heavyweight boxing champion after defeating Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, in 1908.
Two years later, he faced off against boxer Jim Jeffries, who had been called out of retirement and was referred to as the “great white hope” because many white fans wanted him to beat Johnson and take back the heavyweight crown.
Johnson defended his title in Reno, Nevada, in front of a mostly white crowd, prompting violent race riots in which more than 20 people were killed and hundreds were injured. Most of the victims were black.
[…]
In 1913, Johnson was convicted of taking his white girlfriend across state lines.
He was convicted under the Mann Act, a law that was meant to prevent human trafficking and protect women against prostitution, but its critics say the law was used in racially motivated prosecutions of African-Americans and to punish political dissidents.
Lawyers for the Justice Department at the time argued that Johnson’s relationship with a white woman was a “crime against nature.”
It took less than two hours for an all-white jury to convict the boxing legend, derailing his career and ruining his reputation.
Haywood told CNN a story that was passed down through her family over the years. After Johnson discovered he was going to prison, he went to his sister’s house and sat at her kitchen table, where he burst into tears.
“He had money, and even with his money, he couldn’t stop it,” Haywood said. “A rich, famous, powerful man, broken down into tears like that because he was going to prison, just because he loved and married outside of his race.”
[…]
Trump isn’t the first president to be asked to give Johnson a posthumous pardon.
In 2016, a bipartisan group of lawmakers — headed by former Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. John McCain — petitioned President Barack Obama to give Johnson a pardon on the 70th anniversary of the boxer’s death.
Haywood said she was optimistic that Trump would follow through, but she was trying to keep her excitement at bay until she knew for a fact that he would give Johnson the pardon.
“It’s been frustrating,” she said, to wait all these years only to be disappointed time and time again. “It’s been exhausting.”
It seems as though the left would have difficulty finding fault if Trump were to pardon Johnson, but never underestimate the ideological possession of progressives.
From The Nation:
I have written before why I think this government lacks the ethical standing to either exonerate or pardon Johnson seventy-two years after his death.
[…]
Yet what is even more repellent today is the thought that Donald Trump would be the one to “pardon” Johnson.
[…]
Donald Trump not only lacks the credibility to either pardon or exonerate Jack Johnson—he does not even have the moral standing to have Jack Johnson’s name in his mouth.
Other liberal journalists will surely take the same tack as the far-left magazine “The Nation.”
Leave it to leftists to ruin everything, even acknowledging injustices of the past.