Donald Trump Dishonors Legacy of Indianapolis 500

One month from now the world’s oldest and most significant auto race, the Indianapolis 500, will commemorate its 100th birthday. 

The Memorial weekend race which was first held in 1911 and is annually attended by more than 300,000 fans, is a legendary sports event admired by people everywhere. Sadly, race officials will dishonor a proud legacy and what should be a magnificent look back on history by allowing Donald Trump to have a prominent part in the centennial celebration.

Recently, Indianapolis 500 officials announced that Trump, the billionaire host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, would drive the Chevrolet Camaro pace car. This is a prestigious honor which should not go to a man who is now viciously spewing hatred and thinly-veiled racism at the President of the United States. 

For weeks Trump who is allegedly flirting with the idea of running for president himself, has pandered to the growing numbers of right-wing, wing-nuts known as “birthers” who refuse to believe that President Barack Obama, is a natural born citizen, eligible to hold the nation’s highest office.

This week, even though he didn’t have to do it, and shouldn’t have had to do it,  the President allowed his long-form birth certificate to be released to the public. It showed, just like the official short-form birth certificate did three years ago, that President Obama was indeed born in a Honolulu, Hawaii hospital on August 4, 1961. Still, that wasn’t enough for Donald Trump, a man who like his hair, looks increasingly foolish, paranoid and ignorant. 

Trump actually took credit for the president releasing the birth record and then promptly, in another paranoid, racially-coded frenzy, went on to suggest that the President’s academic record was so poor that he somehow didn’t deserve to be admitted to Columbia University and later Harvard University Law School. 

I have no idea whether affirmative action played a part in Mr. Obama’s education—which is what Trump was really saying. And even if it did – so what? He would then be proof that affirmative action works. The president finished near  the top of his class at Harvard.  What else needs to be said?  No one is fooled by what Trump is doing. It is ugly and repugnant.

Still media outlets continue to give this buffoon air time and print space which only seem to validate his faux presidential candidacy and his faux issues. Trump, who through his actions, is proving that he is not worthy of high office, and is certainly not worthy of driving the pace car at the event known as the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

I have attended nearly 40 Indianapolis 500s.  It remains my favorite sporting event.  But I am deeply disappointed that Indianapolis 500 officials have agreed to this dastardly deal with the devil.  As an African American, proud of my country, and proud of our president, who also knows racism when I see it, I am outraged by the relentless attempts to stain and discredit Mr. Obama.  I know exactly what Trump and others of his ilk are trying to imply.

You may or may not agree with Mr. Obama’s policies or his politics, which of course is fine with me. But the political battle should be fought over issues, not “trumped-up” and baseless accusations. 

Trump’s efforts to discredit the president by impugning Mr. Obama’s inherent rights as a legal citizen of this country, who absolutely is eligible for the presidency is shameful, wrong, and ultimately, anti-American. That Trump would dignify his absurd accusation that the president wasn’t born in Hawaii and somehow sneaked into Columbia and Harvard says everything I need to know about “The Donald.”

So I ask: What are your credentials Mr. Trump? What were your grades? Where were you born? Are you really a billionaire? But most importantly, why aren’t you a decent person?  Many of us have lots of questions about you. Can you answer them?  Since I know you won’t, please just shut up and go away. As President Obama said this week the problems of the nation are too serious to tolerate “sideshows” and “carnival barkers” like you.

And the Indianapolis 500, on the eve of it’s most important celebration, should do the only decent and right thing — tell Donald Trump – You’re fired!!!.

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