Former President Donald Trump is facing heat from various black political leaders after he suggested he is a favorite among black voters.
Trump was in South Carolina on Friday when he said black voters like him “because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as being discriminated against.” He also claimed the black community “embraced” his mugshot “more than anybody else.”
The Democratic National Committee sounded off on the comments soon after. Press secretary Sarafina Chitika is a black woman herself.
“This might come as news to Trump, but pushing tired tropes, wannabe Jordans, and mugshot t-shirts isn’t going to win over Black voters who suffered through record high unemployment and skyrocketing uninsured rates under his leadership,” Chitika said in a statement. “Trump is showing Black voters exactly what he thinks of them – and his ideas to win them over are as corny and racist as he is.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson expressed he was “outraged but not surprised by yet another racist remark” from Trump in a statement to the Hill.
“Donald Trump is delusional to think that his criminality would be an attractive quality to Black voters,” Johnson said. “He has taken advantage of an inherently racist system, while Black Americans have been abused by it. We are not the same.”
Jasmine Harris, the Biden-Harris campaign’s black media director, piped in as well.
”The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” Harris wrote. “… Come November, no matter how many disingenuous voter engagement events he attends, black Americans will show Donald Trump we know exactly who he is.”
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In 2020, 13.5% of all eligible voters were black. According to the Pew Research Center, that figure is expected to be 14% in 2024.
Biden visited South Carolina twice last month on the campaign trail, and Vice President Kamala Harris has been twice on her own. The effort to establish a foothold in the state in the hopes of garnering more black supporters was effective in that Biden won the Democratic Primary with 96%. However, South Carolina’s black voter turnout was only 4%. The state’s Republican primary is on Saturday.
