Black Lives Matter ‘Discriminatory’ and ‘Bad for Black People’: Trump

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a press conference in the James S. Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on Aug. 31, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

The “Black Lives Matter” movement is discriminatory and bad for black people, as well as everybody else, President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Monday.

Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham companies that have donated money to the cause are “led by weak people” before describing Black Lives Matter as a Marxist organization.

Karl Marx’s theories formed the basis of communism, an ideology that’s led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Black Lives Matter Global Network co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a 2015 interview that both she and Alicia Garza, another co-founder, are “trained Marxists.”

Cullors said in another interview that she received training from the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a “think/act tank” that leaders say has roots “in the new communist movement.”

Patrisse Cullors attend an event in West Hollywood, Calif., on Feb. 13, 2020. (Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for The West Hollywood EDITION)

“We appreciate the work of the U.S. Communist Party,” the Labor/Community Strategy Center wrote in 2018.

Trump referenced a chant that is popular at Black Lives Matter events, “‘pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.'”

“That was the first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter. I said, that’s a terrible name. It’s so discriminatory, it’s bad for black people, it’s bad for everybody,” he said.

“And all of a sudden it becomes like sort of—although now, if you look, it’s gone way down because people are tired of this stuff, what’s going on, the Black Lives Matter. If you look at what’s going on with the bats and they’re a lot of thugs,” he said, before being interrupted.

“But Black Lives Matter came into existence walking down the street screaming, ‘pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.' And that was about police officers, that was representing police,” he added.

Black Lives Matter Global Network did not respond to a request for comment.

The movement has come under increasing scrutiny as some local leaders decline to condemn the rioting that’s taken place in cities across the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s death in policy custody in Minneapolis on May 25.

Protesters fly Black Lives Matter flags in support of the movement during the Commitment March, organized by Rev. Al Sharpton, in Washington on Aug. 28, 2020. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Clashes between pro-Trump ralliers and counter-demonstrators in Portland over the weekend left one person on the pro-Trump side dead. The possible suspect has described himself as a Black Lives Matter supporter and a member of Antifa, the far-left, anarcho-communist group.

The new interview wasn’t the first time Trump has taken aim at Black Lives Matter.

The president last month said he opposed the painting of a mural for the movement on the street in front of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Police officers, he said, wouldn’t want the “symbol of hate” to be affixed to “New York’s greatest street.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio later helped paint the big yellow letters spelling out Black Lives Matter on the street, saying the move was “liberating Fifth Avenue.”

“So, when we say, ‘Black Lives Matter’, there is no more American statement, there is no more patriotic statement, because there is no America without black America,” he said.