Vice President J.D. Vance, who previously spread conspiracy theories about the Black Lives Matter movement, said Saturday that its leaders and supporters should celebrate President Donald Trump because he’s “done more to save Black lives than any leader in our country.”
Trump has called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and called its supporters “thugs.” In 2020, Trump deployed the National Guard on people in Washington, D.C. protesting the police murder of George Floyd. He also allegedly said of the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them?”
Vance’s idea came up in the context of the peace agreement between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo, which was brokered by the U.S. and Qatar on Friday. “The peace treaty signing yesterday between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda was truly historic,” he wrote on Bluesky, where he is the most blocked account. “That war has killed more than any since World War 2, almost all of them black.” (He seems to be thinking of the death toll of the Second Congo War, which ended in 2003. )
He continued: “I’m sure the leaders and supporters of the black lives matter movement will join me in celebrating President Trump today, who has done more to save black lives than any leader in our country.”
He then tagged New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie. Bouie became a target of Trump and Vance when he wrote about Vance’s “blood and soil nationalism,” a Nazi slogan.
The Trump administration helped facilitate the peace deal in order to gain access to minerals in the region. Congo is estimated to have minerals worth up to $24 trillion.
“They were going at it for many years, and with machetes — it is one of the worst, one of the worst wars that anyone has ever seen. And I just happened to have somebody that was able to get it settled,” Trump said Friday.
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“We’re getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it. They’re so honored to be here. They never thought they’d be coming.”
Congo is a source of key minerals including cobalt, copper, and coltan, as well as diamonds and gold. Last year, Congo filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium, accusing subsidiaries of Apple of using “blood minerals” in its products.
“These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation,” Congo’s lawyers said in a statement.
The Trump administration has significantly harmed Africa by shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development and cutting more than 90 percent of its foreign aid contracts.
In response to USAID cuts to efforts in Congo, anti-poverty organization Oxfam said in a statement, “The health of up to 1 million people could be at risk due to the impact of this decision on the work of humanitarian agencies in the DRC. We will be forced to cut vital clean water and sanitation services, increasing the risk of the spread of cholera, measles, and mpox.”
Trump’s foreign aid cuts have gutted the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved tens of millions of lives. According to a recent study, millions are expected to die as a result of these cuts in countries supported by PEPFAR, which include Congo.
Vance previously peddled the conspiracy theory that insurance companies and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos supported Black Lives Matter because that enriched their businesses. In a 2021 piece in The American Mind called “Fighting Woke Capital,” he explained that “woke capital is when companies and businesses are more invested in a movement like BLM than they are in traditional American principles, and they are.”
He claimed that insurance companies funded the Black Lives Matter movement, with the theory being that Black Lives Matter was damaging businesses and property and then the insurance companies would refuse to cover those claims. (It is unclear why this would be lucrative, if it was true at all.)
“Now who benefits most when small businesses on Main Street are destroyed?” he asked. “Who wants to see their competitors unable to deliver goods and services to people so they get it delivered in the Amazon box? Jeff Bezos. There is a direct connection between woke capital and the plunder that’s happening in our society today. The people who are invested in destroying America via our corporate class are also getting rich from it. This is an important piece of the puzzle to understand.”
In 2020, Amazon gave $10 million to social justice organizations, including Black Lives Matter. But Vance’s supposed reason for those donations and his depiction of the protests as a campaign to destroy property has no basis in reality.
From Rolling Stone US
