By Merve Berker


ANKARA (AA) - Former US President Donald Trump on Friday claimed that his criminal indictments and mug shot have boosted his support among Black Americans because they see him as a victim of discrimination.

Trump was speaking at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual Honors Gala in Columbia, South Carolina.

Claiming that the Black community’s support for him has grown lately, he said: “A lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m discriminated against.”

Referring to his mug shot taken in Atlanta last summer after he was charged for trying to change the election results to his favor, the former president said: “When I did the mug shot in Atlanta, that mug shot is number one.”

“You know who embraced it more than anyone else? The Black population," he added.

Trump said that he was acquainted with numerous Black individuals since Black construction workers had built his properties.

Though he seemed to have received applause for his words, Trump did not touch on Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which started when he was the president after the killing of a Black man in Minneapolis in June 2020.

George Floyd, 46, died on May 25, 2020, after Officer Derek Chauvin, 46, who is white, kneeled on Floyd’s neck as he repeatedly said he could not breathe.

The killing was captured on video and sparked protests across the country about police brutality and racial injustice.

Among his plenty of speeches about the protests at that time, the former US president repeatedly called BLM protesters “thugs,” “terrorists” and “anarchists.”

In May 2020, Trump remarked that the demonstrators outside the White House after Floyd's killing were "just there to cause trouble," adding that if they approached too close, "they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That's when people would have been really badly hurt, at least."