President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to offer his condolences and pay tribute to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. after the Tuesday death of the late civil rights activist and two-time presidential candidate.
Trump wrote:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 17, 2026
The Reverend Jesse Jackson is Dead at 84. I knew him well, long before becoming President. He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and “street smarts.” He was very gregarious - Someone who truly loved people! Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way. I provided office space for him and his Rainbow Coalition, for years, in the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street; Responded to his request for help in getting CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM passed and signed, when no other President would even try; Single handedly pushed and passed long term funding for Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), which Jesse loved, but also, which other Presidents would not do; Responded to Jesse’s support for Opportunity Zones, the single most successful economic development package yet approved for Black business men/women, and much more. Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him. He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand. He loved his family greatly, and to them I send my deepest sympathies and condolences. Jesse will be missed! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Read More: Rev. Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader and 2-Time Presidential Candidate, Dies at 84
Of course, the left is losing its mind over this, particularly the part about their personal messiah, former President Barack Obama. The usual suspects are basically proving Trump's words above correct by calling him racist and connecting back to the now infamous Lion King AI video that had Democrats, the Left, and some Republicans outraged.
Trump's language is often colored in hyperbole, so whether Jackson "could not stand" Obama could be put into question. However, Jackson never fully embraced Obama, and it's been documented in the over-a-decade coverage of the post-Obama presidency that his administration deliberately aligned with the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, while relegating Jackson to the sidelines.
What sealed the trajectory of this was this 2008 "hot mic" moment that went 'round the world.
WATCH:
Not only did this taint Jackson's credibility, but it sealed Jackson's fate as yesterday's news in terms of civil rights influence.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by the blog TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed the TVNewer's account to The Associated Press, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said the network had nothing to do with the latest on this embarrassing moment for Jackson, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.
"We're not out to get Jesse Jackson," O'Reilly said. "We're not out to embarrass him. We're not out to make him look bad."
Jackson did apologize to the Obama campaign, saying:
"It was not a public speech or a declaration," Jackson said at the news conference, adding the comments "will not be helpful."
"For any harm or hurt that this hot mic private conversation may have caused, I apologize," he said in a written apology released earlier in the day. "My support for Senator Obama's campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal."
But note former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's words: "We're not out to make him look bad."
That wasn't the case with Obama, who ensured Jesse Jackson ended up in the wilderness. The new civil rights guard, which now had Al Sharpton as its titular head, dismissed the longtime activist as "a relic from the past." Though Jackson still did public speaking and his own political work, his star power was severely diminished.
In a 2015 exclusive, National Review pulled back the curtain on this palace intrigue. Valerie Jarrett, the puppet master of the Obama White House, did not like Jackson. So, she was the one who engineered the embrace of Sharpton and ensured Jackson was pushed into the margins of the movement.
And as it turned out, from her days in Chicago, Jarrett already “hated Jesse Jackson,” a source close to Sharpton tells me. “Obama needed a legitimate black voice from the civil-rights community,” the source adds. “Jesse had made disparaging comments about Obama, [so] Jesse got sidelined. Sharpton is the next person in line.”
[...]
Regardless of the venue, sources close to Sharpton say that in late 2007 or early 2008, Jarrett negotiated a simple deal with the reverend: Sharpton would discreetly support Obama for president, working mostly behind the scenes; he wouldn’t publicly criticize Obama, but he also wouldn’t back him in a way that aroused attention.
According to the exclusive, Sharpton was instrumental in doing damage control after the Rev. Jeremiah "G--d@a*n America" Wright mess. Once Obama ascended to the presidency in 2008, Sharpton's background loyalty paid off.
Sharpton’s damage control of the Wright controversy won him trust with Obama, laying the groundwork for a relationship that continues today, sources say. As Brendan Bordelon noted last month, Sharpton has visited the White House at least 61 times since Obama took office.
The logs also show that often these meetings have been with either Valerie Jarrett or her staff, who have continued to help manage the Sharpton-Obama relationship. But in an interview with NRO, Sharpton downplayed both the number of meetings and the importance of his relationship with Jarrett.
[...]
Long after Obama’s election and reelection, both the president and Sharpton continue to benefit from the relationship, Watson says.
“I think Sharpton helps to legitimize Obama and protect him against critics who claim he’s not black enough,” he explains, “while at the same time, Obama provides credibility to Al Sharpton against the critics who say he is racist and doesn’t have a track record in civil rights.”
But it was obvious the Obama campaign wasn't content to just break Jackson and his legacy: they also threw his son under the bus.
If you recall, it was around 2008 when intel started to drop about then-Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who was the national co-chairman of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and was a visible surrogate for the Democrat Party. The cutthroat nature of Chicago Democrat politics was in full bore, especially now that the head of the party was in the White House.
Rep. Jackson was often talked about as a possible successor to Mayor Richard M. Daley if the mayor ever decided to retire. But well before Daley did retire, Jackson's political stardom began to crash.
The cracks first became evident when Jackson's name was associated with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to see then-President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat in 2008. While Jackson was never charged with anything associated with that scandal, federal authorities did charge that Blagojevich tried to obtain $1.5 million in campaign cash in exchange for appointing Jackson to the seat.
Damage done. Jackson Jr. spiraled down from there during the golden age of the Obama presidency.
Blagojevich was convicted following two corruption trials in 2011. Jackson maintained that he did nothing wrong and said he did not authorize anyone to offer Blagojevich campaign money. But he did face a Congressional ethics probe into the Blagojevich allegations and for allegedly using his congressional staff to campaign for the Senate seat publicly.
Jackson also came under the spotlight around that same time for an affair with a Washington restaurant hostess. He denied spending public money on the tryst, and was never charged in that scandal either.
In November 2012, Jackson resigned from his seat in Congress, citing health reasons, as he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder the previous summer. But Jackson also acknowledged upon his resignation that he was the subject of a federal probe.
Jackson Jr. was convicted in 2013 for misuse of campaign funds and served 23 months of a sentence, which included some prison time, three months in a halfway house, and the final three months on home confinement. From reports, this broke the already fragile Jackson family, and the senior Jackson was not the same after this. Jackson advocated for both the Biden administration and the Trump administration for a pardon for his son, but despite Trump pardoning Rod Blagojevich, the former IL Governor with whom Jackson Jr. was ensnared, neither administration made the choice to pardon his son.
Jesse Jackson Jr. is making inroads back into politics, attempting a run for his old congressional seat. According to a Tuesday CNN interview, he said before his father's death that he spoke on the phone twice with President Trump, encouraging the president to bring all Americans together.
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