Two children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s are slamming President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign for using their father’s image in a campaign ad.
The 90-second ad extolls American virtues of bravery, hard work and persistence. It includes images of both King and baseball legend Jackie Robinson with narration, “Impossible? We treat that word as motivation.”
The only other Black images in the video are of a Black jazz band and, earlier, a masked woman walking past a boarded-up storefront, when the narration warns that “some folks want to ... terrorize our communities.”
All of the other people featured in the video, extolling Americans as, “Daring, courageous, loyal,” are white.
In a tweet, Martin Luther King III called on the Trump campaign to take the ad down immediately.
“My father stood for community, and President Trump is only encouraging division and hatred,” he wrote. “While many may not be in the same vicinity as my father, President Trump is not even in the neighborhood.”
Bernice King, also on Twitter, called the ad “beyond insulting.”
“My father should not be used in ways strongly misaligned with his vision and values, @realDonaldTrump,” she wrote.
Jackie Robinson’s daughter also weighed in, saying that her family strongly objects to Trump using her father’s image.
“The Trump campaign is in opposition to all that Jackie Robinson stood for and believed in,” she wrote.
One King family member who has not weighed in is Alveda King, King’s niece, who is a vocal supporter of the Trump campaign. Instead of denouncing the ad, her social media features campaign videos of the president, including a tweet, “TRUMP IS STILL NOT A RACIST!”
The video, which the campaign posted to YouTube this week, has already been viewed more than 5 million times online.
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