Donald Trump has linked his achievements on the anniversary of being sworn in as president with Martin Luther King Jr‘s birthday, as the he boasted of low unemployment among black Americans.

On Twitter, the US president wrote: “It was exactly three years ago today, January 20, 2017, that I was sworn into office. So appropriate that today is also MLK jr DAY. African-American Unemployment is the LOWEST in the history of our Country, by far. Also, best Poverty, Youth, and Employment numbers, ever. Great!”

Asked how Mr Trump is celebrating this year’s nationwide memorial recognising the murdered civil rights leader, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said the president “agrees with many of the things” Dr King stood for, including “unity and equality”.

Then she pivoted to the president’s upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, saying: ”He’s not the one trying to tear the country apart.”

Ms Conway said Dr King’s “vision” did not include “Americans dragged through the process where the president is not going to be removed from office”.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

The administration listed no public events celebrating Dr King on Monday. The president issued a proclamation on 17 January in advance of the federal holiday, writing that the administration “works each day to ensure that all Americans have every opportunity to realise a better life for themselves and their families regardless of race, class, gender, or any other barriers that have arbitrarily stood in their way”.

Mr Trump and Mike Pence, the vice president, did visit Dr King’s memorial marker in Washington DC. This year, his campaign’s Twitter account posted a photograph showing Mr Trump walking through the memorial – a photo taken at last year’s wreath-laying ceremony – to “honour the life” of Dr King, but it did not disclose that the image was from last year.

His campaign account also juxtaposed images of Dr King with footage of the president appearing with black Americans as part of a fundraising video.

Mr Trump largely spent the day in Washington in 2019 because of a government shutdown that effectively grounded the first family. In 2018, he was in Palm Beach, Florida. He spent this weekend in Florida and Texas, where he addressed the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Ms Conway said she spent the morning “reading some of the lesser-known passages by Dr King” and said that she appreciates that “we as a nation respect him by giving him his own day”.

This morning, the White House issued a message on Twitter, saying the president will “pause to honour the incredible life and accomplishments” of Dr King, who was assassinated on 4 April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he was addressing striking sanitation workers amid preparations for a Poor People’s Campaign.