Trump compares self to Black voters
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Former president Donald Trump sought to appeal to Black voters on Friday night in South Carolina by repeatedly citing the 91 felony charges he faces and comparing them to unfair treatment from the criminal justice system toward minorities in America.
“A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me, because they had been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. … Maybe there’s something to it,” he said, right after talking about the charges.
He also cited his mug shot in Georgia — taken last summer after he was charged for trying to overturn the state’s election results — as a reason that Black voters would gravitate toward him in November. Trump said he now saw Black Americans wearing mug shots on their Tshirts.
“When I did the mug shot in Atlanta, that mug shot is number one,” Trump said. He added that the Black population “embraced it more than anyone else.”
He also said: “I’m being indicted for you, the Black population.”
Trump faces 91 felony counts in four separate cases for allegedly mishandling classified information, obstructing justice, conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and falsifying business records in connection to hush money paid to an adult-film star.
The former president spoke for about 90 minutes to a room of about 500 Republicans at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual awards gala at a convention center here. The crowd cheered and laughed at some of his more inflammatory lines and many of the attendees defended Trump vigorously.
Trump has frequently been criticized by Democrats and some Republicans for his positions on race, including when he dined with a white supremacist, Nick Fuentes, at his Mar-a-Lago Club; said there were “many fine people” on both sides after a deadly white supremacist riot in Charlottesville; and called countries like Haiti “shithole countries” while in the White House. For years he amplified the false conspiracy theory that former president Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was actually born in Kenya.
“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. This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park 5, questioned George Floyd’s humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black workers spiked during his presidency,” said Biden campaign spokeswoman Jasmine Harris. “Donald Trump has been showing Black Americans his true colors for years: An incompetent, antiBlack tyrant who holds us to such low regard that he publicly dined with white nationalists a week after declaring his 2024 candidacy.”