The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) blamed then-President Donald Trump for the supposed hate crime against black and gay actor Jussie Smollett in 2019 in the City of Chicago.
A Chicago jury found Smollett guilty of five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct on Thursday for faking the hate crime and reporting it to police.
As Breitbart News reported at the time:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), the country’s most influential civil rights organization, has blamed President Donald Trump for Tuesday morning’s attack on actor Jussie Smollett.
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NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson issued a statement Tuesday afternoon specifically blaming Trump’s “racist and xenophobic rhetoric”:
The recent racist and homophobic attack on acclaimed actor and activist Jussie Smollett is troubling. The rise in hate crimes is directly linked to President Donald J. Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric. It is dangerous for any society to allow a tone of divisiveness and hatred to dominate the political discourse. As this rhetoric continues to bleed into our everyday lives, dangerous behavior will continue to place many law-abiding individuals at risk. We pray for a full physical and mental recovery Jussie Smollett and many unnamed victims of this forum of hate based terrorism.
The NAACP had not appeared to react to Thursday’s verdict at the time of this article’s publication.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.