WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump used one of his last days at the White House on Monday to fight the cultural war, while President-elect Joe Biden watched Martin Luther King Jr.’s day volunteering to help feed the poor. needy.
With less than 48 hours to go before Wednesday’s inauguration, Trump remained hidden in the heavily fortified capital, while the White House did not provide details on how the president was spending his last hours in office.
Forbidden to access Twitter, Trump issued a proclamation on the federal holiday on Monday, encouraging “all Americans to commit themselves again to Dr. King’s dream, participating in acts of service to others, his community and our nation. “.
Later, his White House issued a 45-page document dubbed “The 1776 Report”, which stated that “identity politics makes it less likely that racial reconciliation and healing can be achieved by pursuing Martin Luther King Jr’s dream . ”.
The report appears to be a response to The New York Times ‘Project 1619’, which traced the history of slavery throughout American history and became a lightning rod for Trump and conservatives, who saw it as an attack on his vision of American history.
The report, written by a group of mostly white and conservative academics, states that the country’s founders detested slavery, although many of them were slave owners. This suggests that the Declaration of Independence ended up leading to the end of slavery in the United States, hardly mentioning the Civil War’s decisive role in abolition.
Scholars attacked the report, with a comparing for a “bad 1955 civic textbook” and another dispensing as “racist nonsense from the early 20th century, accentuated by some Southern Strategy and cultural war paranoia”.
“Don’t open it, delete the file, burn your computer and make sure to salt the land wherever the people of the Commission go,” added another.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told NBC News that it was no more than the index and a single section title – “The American Mind” – before concluding that the report was a likely failure.
“There is no single American mind,” he said. “This alone signals that this report will fail to assess the diversity of ideas, cultures and perspectives that is one of our nation’s great assets.
Citing a section of the report that compared affirmative action to the ideas put forward by John C. Calhoun, the southern politician and fervent defender of slavery, Grossman added that the document is “offensive to Dr. King’s legacy”.
The White House also issued an executive order from Trump on Monday playing a similar chord, offering details for his proposal “National Garden of American Heroes”, an idea he first promoted last summer during the height of the Black Lives protests Matters and the removal of monuments in honor of Confederate soldiers and other controversial historical figures.
The proposed garden does not seem to have financing, location or much more to see it become a reality. New national monuments, even those that are not controversial, usually take decades to build. The World War II Memorial at the National Mall, for example, opened 17 years after it was first proposed in Congress.
But Trump, who last month vetoed a military financing project that would have renamed some bases under the name of Confederate generals, said the garden was “America’s response to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values and all manner of life.”
In his executive order, Trump said the garden would honor an apparent group of 244 Americans, from Samuel Adams to Kobe Bryant, including some non-Americans, such as British director Alfred Hitchcock.
Meanwhile, Biden and his wife, along with elected vice president Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, helped pack food for the needy at local charities.
Its inaugural committee called on supporters to participate in a national day of service on Monday, organizing some 2,500 service events across the country, and was hosting an online event with speeches and music in honor of the King on Monday night. .
Harris formally resigned his Senate seat at noon on Monday, as expected. California Governor Gavin Newsom invited California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to serve the remainder of Harris’ term, which ends in 2022.
“We are here today as part of what we collectively, all of us who were volunteers, see as our responsibility as part of Dr. King’s legacy,” Harris told reporters while volunteering at a charity in Washington. “And we’re obviously here to renew the commitment that each of us must have to serve.”
Gallup, which has sought presidential approval since 1938, released its final poll on Trump’s presidency on Monday. He found that Trump’s popularity reached a personal low of 34% and that, on average, during his entire four-year term, Trump had the worst approval rating of any president ever recorded.
Other recent polls, however, including a recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll, found Trump’s approval rating largely unchanged.
Trump hasn’t been seen publicly in days.
But First Lady Melania Trump, standing in a blue pulpit emblazoned with the presidential seal, delivered the kind of farewell speech on Monday that would not have been remarkable at any other time, but was remarkable now because her husband has so far refused to make a similar gesture.
“Be passionate about everything you do,” said Melania Trump in a video of her comments, weeks after the Capitol was invaded by pro-Trump rioters, “but always remember that violence is never the answer and will never be justified.”