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President Donald Trump’s attempt to defend the use of immigrant labor on farms left some on social media seeing similarities to remarks justifying slavery.
The administration of President Donald Trump has made it a point to conduct immigration raids on farms in his second term, but just as it seems there could be some resolution, his comments in a recent interview trying to justify the use of immigrant labor has some likening it to past defenses of slavery existing in the United States.
Trump appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday (August 5) to talk about the possibility of the administration granting
protections for undocumented farm workers, before rambling: “These people, you can’t replace them very easily. People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally … they don’t get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die.”
The comments drew considerable backlash from those who observed the segment. Wayne State University historian Brandon McEuen noted how Trump’s comments had a similarity to racist beliefs that people of color were more genetically predisposed to manual labor. “Trump saying people of color are naturally suited to farm labor sure sounds a lot like the slaveholders that said slaves were naturally inclined to servitude,” he wrote in a post on the BlueSky platform.
That was echoed by journalist and SiriusXM radio host Michaelangelo Signorile on BlueSky, who wrote: “The racism here is on steroids, as Trump tried to make case to MAGA that farmers need exemptions. Says brown people do hard labor “naturally” and don’t get bad back, while also saying they’ve tried to replace them with people “in the inner city” but they can’t get them to do the work.”
Others saw the segment and were more direct with their assessment of Trump’s comments. One commenter named Ariel Michelle on X, formerly Twitter, wrote: “Trump would’ve fought for the South, huh?” And there were a slew of those online who recalled Trump’s remarks about “Black jobs” being used during his presidential campaign last year, which also elicited a backlash.
