Despite Trump’s claim Jesse Jackson ‘could not stand’ Obama, here’s what he said about Trump before his death

“I think that Trump has done an awful lot to set race relations back by inciting fear in people,” Jackson said during a 2020 interview.

President Donald Trump used the death of civil rights icon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to take a dig at his longtime political foe, former President Barack Obama. But while the 47th president of the United States touted his support of Jackson and the Black community, Jackson was far from a fan of Trump’s presidency.

“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social following Jackson’s death at 84. The president, who said he knew Jesse Jackson “very well,” boasted about helping the activist, including providing office space for Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition in New York City.

Despite Trump’s glowing remarks about Rev. Jackson, the civil rights leader had little praise for Trump at the end of his first term.

“I think that Trump has done an awful lot to set race relations back by inciting fear in people,” Jackson said during a 2020 interview with Planet America.

Referring to Trump’s then-signature border wall, Jackson continued, “The wall is between you and I. Behind the wall is ignorance, fear, hatred and violence… when we pull the walls down, we begin to play ball together.”

Jackson’s remarks came at the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, in which Trump threatened to sic “vicious dogs” on protesters and infamously had demonstrators pepper-sprayed at Lafayette Square outside the White House so that he could take a photograph with a bible.

The civil rights icon, who years later suffered from health issues and was hospitalized several times, told the news program at the time, “Trump reversed the norms, and gave white people a sense of unfounded fear,” adding, “It’s based on fear of Black people.”

Jackson said of Black Americans: “We made America better in every dimension.”

As the 2020 presidential election was just months away, Rev. Jackson urged Americans to use their “collective vote to defeat Donald Trump,” who he warned “represents something dangerous to America.”

He continued, “Using the presidency for personal gain without enforcing the emoluments clause in our Constitution, playing on racial fears, [saying] Africa and Caribbean countries are s-holes.” Jackson also called out Trump’s defense of white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and instituting a Muslim ban, which included mostly African countries.

Jackson made clear, “I want to see Trump defeated.”

Of course, Jackson’s wish came true when Trump lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden. However, he likely didn’t anticipate his return to the White House in 2024. In his second term, Trump has sought to dismantle DEI and racial equity programs designed to close racial gaps, resulting in the censoring of the very Black history Jackson fought to preserve.

The president has also been rebuked by civil rights leaders for what they say are Trump’s efforts to undermine Black and Brown voters, from urging sttaes to redraw gerrymandered maps targeting districts that are majority Black and Hispanic, to seizing the 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, while pushing the false claim that he lost to Biden as a result of mass voter fraud.

Speaking on Trump in 2020, Jackson’s words echo those of many of Trump’s critics in 2026: “The Trump people are determined to undermine that vote, though we’re not going to let them.”