Washington DC - On Wednesday, President Donald Trump hosted a reception at the White House in celebration of Black History Month.

Trump took to the stage at the event in the East Wing of the White House with the predominantly white crowd loudly chanting, "Four more years!"

The president then gave a speech, which he opened by listing a number of Black people he knows, such as former boxer Mike Tyson.

"Mike has been loyal to me. Whenever they come out, they say, 'Trump is a racist, Trump's a racist,' Mike Tyson says, 'He's not a racist, he's my friend, he's been there from the beginning, good times and bad,'" Trump told the crowd.

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He went on to name-drop a number of other figures, including his former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, his "pardon czar" Alice Johnson, and HUD Director Scott Turner.

At one point, Trump praised rapper Nicki Minaj – who recently came out as a staunch supporter of his – telling the room, "Her skin is so beautiful!"

Trump also brought up a handful of Black MAGA fans to vouch for him, including an older woman from DC who lost her grandson to violence.

"I love him – I don't want to hear nothing you got to say about that racist stuff," she said, later adding what appears to be an attempt to coin a new MAGA catchphrase: "And Grandma said it!"

For years, Trump has faced accusations of pushing racist and hateful rhetoric.

One of the most memorable instances came in 1989, when Trump paid for full-page ads to be printed in newspapers across New York City calling for the execution of the Central Park Five – a group of Black teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping a White woman in Central Park.

In 2022, after serving years in prison, all members were exonerated after new DNA evidence revealed the actual perpetrator.

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Back in 2008, as Barack Obama was running for president, Trump was one of the first to push the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US and therefore not eligible to run for president.

Obama went on to become the first Black president in the US, and Trump has spent years publicly slandering him and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Most recently, only two weeks before his Black History Month event, Trump faced intense backlash after he shared a video featuring the head of both Obama's on the bodies of dancing monkeys, which many critics deemed blatantly racist.

Trump has also openly pushed white nationalist and white supremacist ideals, co-opted the Black Power fist, accused immigrants of "poisoning the blood" of America, and pushed false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets.

He has also questioned the "Blackness" of minority politicians, fought to reinstall Confederate monuments across the country, and has attempted to remove mentions of slavery from federally funded museums and institutions.