President Donald Trump’s statement following the death of Rev. Jesse Jackson was largely centered on himself. Experts break down why the president’s tribute to the late civil rights icon was not only “disrespectful,” but hypocritical.

On Tuesday, Trump responded to the news of Jackson’s death by sharing what was apparently meant to be a tribute to the late civil rights icon on his Truth Social Platform. The president began his statement by praising Jackson, calling him a “good man,” before he pivoted to attacking his critics and those he referred to as “lunatics on the radical left.”

“Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way,” he wrote, before he listed ways he said he had aided Jackson’s efforts over the years.

He then singled out former President Barack Obama, claiming that Jackson, a monumental figure of modern American politics, “could not stand” Obama.

“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him,” Trump wrote. “He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand.”

Read Trump’s full statement here.

In 2008, Fox News caught Jackson on a hot mic criticizing Obama for “talking down to Black people.” He apologized after the incident, and Obama had released a statement accepting his apology shortly after. Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988, was famously seen tearing up while celebrating Obama’s historic 2008 election victory.

Jackson, a lifelong champion of social and economic justice and human dignity — who tirelessly fought against injustices in the U.S. and abroad — died peacefully surrounded by family early Tuesday, his family announced in a statement. He was 84.

The statement did not include a cause of death. Jackson, however, announced in 2017 he had been living with Parkinson’s disease. Last year, he was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative disorder.

Experts in African-American history, race and social justice called out Trump for seemingly trying to align himself with Jackson’s legacy in his Truth Social post. The civil rights leader stood for the very things the Trump administration has worked to dismantle, they emphasized.

The Trump administration’s ‘whitewashing’ of America is the ‘antithesis’ of what Jackson stood for, one expert says.

Ayesha Bell Hardaway, director of the Social Justice Institute and professor of law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said that while Trump’s post about Jackson referenced some of what the civil rights leader stood for, like criminal justice reform, there’s clearly a “great disconnect” between what Trump believes he stands for and what Jackson has championed for decades.

“That includes humanitarian priorities, understanding and recognizing that the least of us need to be cared for with health care coverage, meaningful employment opportunities and civil rights legislation,” she told HuffPost about Jackson’s legacy. “This president and this administration has done everything but support the foundation of the work that Jackson stood on.”

Hardaway emphasized that Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the advocacy organization founded by Jackson, stood for the “beautiful fabric of diversity” that is represented in the U.S.

“The whitewashing that Trump and the administration are embarking upon in this country is the antithesis of what Jesse Jackson stood for,” she said.

Trump has issued executive orders in his second term as president that have gutted diversity, equity and inclusion practices in organizations across the country. He has ordered U.S. schools to stop teaching what he views as “critical race theory.”

“If left to the Trump Administration, America’s schoolchildren will never learn who Jackson really was,” said Shaun Harper, professor of public policy, education and business at the University of Southern California. “The erasure and sanitizing of our nation’s racial past in textbooks and curriculum will reduce Jackson to the ‘gregarious’ friend of Martin Luther King [Jr.] who ran twice unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency.”

“Students deserve to know that Jackson was so much more than this,” he continued.

Martha Biondi, professor of Black studies and history at Northwestern University, said that following Jackson’s death, her “inclination is to drown out the drumbeat of disrespectful, offensive noise coming from the White House.”

Biondi said that Jackson and Trump are “diametrically opposed.” For instance, Jackson led efforts to increase Black voter registration and to expand democratic freedoms in the U.S. and abroad, she said.

Trump, meanwhile, has been devoted to “shrinking the electorate,” and to “undermining and assailing democratic freedoms, including voting rights, which were a major victory of Jesse Jackson and the civil rights movement.”

“Donald Trump, on the other hand, portrays white South Africans as victims (of what is never clear) and welcomes them with open arms, while he closes the nation’s doors on deserving and suffering refugees from around the world,” she continued.

Biondi also listed Trump’s relationship to billionaires and his administration’s attacks on diversity as more examples of how unalike Trump and Jackson are.

“I could go on and on pointing out how diametrically opposed these two men are,” she said.

Trump using Jackson’s death to attack his critics was ‘disrespectful,’ but predictable, Harper says.

“Writing about ‘scoundrels and lunatics’ in what was supposed to be a tribute post about a colossal American civil rights leader was predictably on brand for Trump,” Harper said. “It was also petty, unpresidential and disrespectful to Jackson’s legacy.”

As it relates to Trump using his tribute to Jackson to slam those who have called him racist, Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class, said the following: “Trump’s history of deploying racist words, images, actions, and policies is so extensive and well-documented that no one who is open to evidence-based thinking can doubt his devotion to white supremacy.”

Winter, who said she has fond memories of campaigning for Jackson with her sister in Minneapolis in 1988, told HuffPost that Trump “exploited” Jackson’s death with his Truth Social post.

“While the nation and world are mourning Jesse Jackson, Trump exploited the occasion of his death to advance his obsessive attack on the Obamas and defecate on everything Jackson stood for,” she said.

Winter said Trump’s relationships “are always transactional.”

“In his mind, Jesse Jackson’s death provided him with an opportunity to attack the values for which Jackson stood and the people for whom he stood,” she said. “Each grudging word of praise was followed by a torrent of venom.”

Hardaway said “everything about this administration is the worst of individualism.”

“It’s how you can deface the Kennedy Center and put your name on it. It is how you can erase the details of American history, regarding slavery and monuments ... it is all about what he is able to dismantle in the span of his presidency,” she said, adding that she’s “not surprised at all” that Trump made his tribute to Jackson about himself.

There are ways elected officials can actually honor Jackson’s legacy.

“Reverend Jackson was visionary in a lot of ways,” Hardaway said, before she pointed out that he championed progressive economic policies and that he created a multi-racial and multi-cultural coalition.

She said honoring Jackson’s legacy would mean, among many things, protecting voting rights and “finding a way to make sure that we are not prioritizing corporations over the need of humans — both in America and abroad.”

Winter said honoring Jackson would require a “two-pronged approach.”

“First, we need to elevate Black history, literature and cultural achievements. If Barack Obama and other leaders today stand on Jackson’s shoulders, we need to remember the many luminaries on whose shoulders Jackson stood,” she said before she listed several important historical figures, including Shirley Chisholm, W.E.B DuBois, Harriet Tubman, Jeffrey Brace, Solomon Northup and many more.

“Jesse Jackson was not nobody from nowhere; he was Somebody from a long line of freedom warriors,” she said.

“Second, we need to continue Jackson’s fight for freedom and democracy,” she continued. “We need a rainbow coalition now more than ever. We need to keep hope alive during this American midnight. We need all hands on deck to reclaim our common ground — the earth itself.”