Trump’s campaign is tapping the few black Republicans in Congress to capitalize on a growing shift in polls, with African-American voters moving away from Democrats.
While Joe Biden still holds a commanding lead among Black voters, Trump has nearly doubled his Black support from 2020 to 2024, according to a recent CNN poll.
Support for Trump among Black voters rose to 22 percent compared to 2020, when the 45th president only had the support of 9 percent of the demographic. Biden, on the other hand, saw his 81 percent support from Black voters in 2020 drop to 69 percent.
Black Republicans, particularly those who appear to be auditioning for a potential vice presidential spot on the ticket with Trump, are heading to the campaign trail to raise funds and court support for the former president.
As part of the ‘Black Americans for Trump’ initiative, the campaign opened an office in Philadelphia on Tuesday and brought together Reps. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, and Byron Donalds, R-Pa., to court black voters with cigars and cognac. .
The duo is eyeing Atlanta, Georgia, for their next outreach event for black voters, a spokesperson for Hunt told DailyMail.com.
“To win a fight you have to go where the fish are,” Hunt said outside the office opening in Northeast Philadelphia. “We are going to boldly go where no Republican has gone in decades, and we are going directly to the community.”
“The reason Democrats have control over the black community is because our parents’ parents keep telling us, ‘You have to vote Democrat,'” Hunt said. ‘It’s up to us in this generation to say, ‘Well, why?’
But the Philadelphia Inquirer said the office had been located in a district made up of 65 percent white people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
In a message of optimism, Donalds said he is beginning to see a “revitalization of the black family,” stating that more young black people are forming nuclear family units, which is “helping fuel the resurgence of a black middle class in America.” “.
“Black issues are American issues,” Hunt said at another point. ‘We hate what is happening at the border. “We don’t like to feel insecure… and the person who is going to save the country from being on the brink is Donald John Trump.”
National polls suggest there could be a realignment among non-white working-class voters without a college degree, and non-white conservatives have been shifting their support to Trump as of November. Republicans argue that even small increases can cause big changes in election results.
Hunt, Donalds and Sen. Tim Scott are three of five black Republicans in Congress.
Scott claimed this week that the change “is becoming so blatantly obvious that it is now undeniable.”
“You see a lot of blacks and minorities moving toward the Republican Party because of employment and justice issues,” Scott said.
The argument is that if Trump increases his margins by another two points among non-college-educated voters and his margins among non-white voters by three points in 2024, he would win five more states and the Electoral College.
The conservative Great Opportunity PAC is taking advantage of what it sees as an opportunity.
It has an initial budget of 14 million dollars for the elections and it is expected to raise more. The budget includes more than $9 million for voter contact and more than $4.7 million for earned and paid media.
The plan is to conduct a large-scale campaign in Black communities and reach out directly to Black voters to help Trump and Republicans in the House and Senate.
Scott said he also believes Trump’s conviction for 34 felonies in New York last month will actually be helpful in attracting more African Americans to the Republican Party.
“There is so much corrosion in that courtroom and that, in my opinion, is associated with the verdicts that the black people that I am talking to in South Carolina, specifically African-American men, are fed up with this two-tier justice system , to the point that “I would suggest that the number today is closer to 50 percent, between 45 and 50 percent of African-American men who are open,” Scott said.
Meanwhile, Donalds went on to say that black voters had become loyal to Democrats because of their leadership in the civil rights movement, but Democratic policies eroded their family values.
‘You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, not only were more blacks conservative (blacks have always had a conservative mindset) but more blacks voted conservatively,’ Donalds, R-Fla., had said during an event to reach black voters on Tuesday.
Donalds drew backlash from Democrats for suggesting there was a silver lining to the Jim Crow era of legal segregation.
He responded in a clip on X:
‘(Democrats) are trying to say that I said ‘blacks did better under Jim Crow.’ I never said that, they are lying. But why would you be surprised? Because they always lie. This is the same Joe Biden who said, if you don’t vote for him, then you are not black The man is a liar. Sorry, call him what he is. What I said was that there are more black families under Jim Crow, and it was HEW’s policies under the welfare state that helped destroy the black family. That’s what I said,’ he said, referring to the expansion of the welfare system under President Lyndon Johnson.
Donalds, Hunt and Scott are rumored to be seeking a spot on Trump’s list for vice president.
“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson, you go down that path and now we are where we are,” Donalds said, referring to the expansion of the welfare state and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
At one point during the event, Donalds and Tafoya discussed the differences between the politics of black men and black women, as polls have shown that much of Trump’s surge in the polls among black voters comes from men.
“First of all, there is a difference between men and women anyway,” Donalds said. ‘Men have been created by God to be conquerors, to be hunters. That’s them. And that’s why a black man in America today looks around and says, ‘How can I go hunt my people and my family?’ … They’re looking at what Joe Biden has done and saying, ‘I can’t hunt! You took my spear. You took my bow.