COLUMBIA, S.C.–Former President Donald Trump, with help from a chorus of prominent black voices, is trying to drown out the old “blacks-should-vote-Democrat” mantra.
The sold-out crowd of 500 people—including at least two of President Trump’s possible vice president picks—burst into laughter, cheers, and applause. That reaction set the tone for a 90-minute repartee between the former president and his mostly black audience.
BCF President Diante Johnson told the audience that he thinks President Trump will snare an unprecedented 50 percent of the black male vote this fall, which would decimate the incumbent’s chances.
President Trump’s BCF speech represented a pivot toward sharper attacks on President Biden and diminished emphasis on intra-party contests. In recent weeks, the Republican and Democrat frontrunners both have been intensifying their fight over key voting blocs, including blacks and unionized workers.
‘The Teleprompter Broke’
One of the most memorable moments of President Trump’s Feb. 23 speech came when he referred to President Biden as a “racist”–a term that then-candidate Joe Biden had slapped onto President Trump in 2020. President Biden’s campaign later responded by rebuking President Trump for the remark.At another point, BCF attendees joined President Trump in shouting a symbolic message to the incumbent: “You’re fired!”—a line Donald Trump made famous during his pre-presidential life as a TV host on “The Apprentice.”
As President Trump reviewed accomplishments of his presidency and discussed issues of special significance to black Americans, he went off-script more than usual. Part of the time, however, it wasn’t by choice because “the teleprompter broke.”
“I’m up here rapping to you guys like 45 minutes without any notes because the stupid teleprompter isn’t working,” he said, quipping that President Biden is gaffe-prone and is “no good with the teleprompter, even when it does work.”
Second Speech of The Day
But President Trump’s speech largely omitted GOP presidential challenger Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as United Nations ambassador during his administration. Although she has lost every primary contest thus far, Ms. Haley has stated she isn’t ready to quit.Earlier in the day, President Trump had fired barbs at Ms. Haley during a rally at the 6,000-seat Winthrop Coliseum in Rock Hill, about 70 miles north of Columbia. “A vote for Nikki Haley tomorrow is a vote for Joe Biden this November,” he said.
Mr. Donalds, who serves as BCF chairman, told the Columbia audience: “Let me tell you, Rock Hill was rockin’ ... and there’s a reason why that occurred. It occurred because our country is struggling ... and because we have a terrible person at the helm of our country in Joe Biden.”
He urged people to reverse the current situation by “electing real leadership back to the White House.”
“Real leadership isn’t always nice—but it’s funny,” Mr. Donalds said, referring to President Trump.
Effect of Legal Battles
After Mr. Donalds introduced him, the former president reminded the audience that he executed policies that benefited blacks, resulting in low unemployment, higher wages, increased home ownership, and long-term funding for historically black colleges and universities.He also implemented criminal justice reform and pardoned people who he believed were given unfairly harsh prison sentences—ironic, since he considers himself to be wrongfully persecuted. A judge recently fined him $355 million, an amount that some legal scholars have denounced as excessively punitive, in a New York real-estate valuation case.
President Trump faces hundreds of years in prison if convicted of offenses ranging from document mishandling to unlawfully attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
On the latter point, some people yelled from the audience, “You won!” President Trump agreed, “We did win.”
He denies wrongdoing and alleges Democrats are waging “lawfare” and “election interference” against him. He says their goal is to damage his candidacy, drain his financial resources, and keep him tied up in court instead of on the campaign trail. His detractors say he deserves to be “held accountable” and that “no one is above the law.”
“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. They were doing it because it’s election interference and then I got indicted a second time, and a third time, and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” President Trump said.
President Trump said his infamous mug shot, taken at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail, seemed to have struck a nerve with blacks.
“The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The black population. It’s incredible. You see black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts,” he said.
Who’s A ‘Racist?’
President Trump told the BCF audience that he is dedicated to improving life for all Americans. He says his “Make America Great Again” slogan applies to everyone, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity.The BCF presented President Trump with the Champion for Black America Award.
President Trump acknowledged several well-known blacks in the audience, including Alveda King, a niece of famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. After representing Georgia as a Democrat congresswoman, Ms. King switched to the Republican Party. President Trump says he has known her for years.
He also recognized others who spoke at the event, including Mr. Donalds; Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas); former NFL player Jack Brewer; and Dr. Ben Carson, his Housing and Urban Development secretary, who received the BCF Lifetime Achievement Award.
After touting his accomplishments, President Trump put on his boxing gloves and threw punches at his presumed November election opponent, President Biden.
He blamed the incumbent president for policies that encourage inflation, illegal immigration, and crime—ills that hurt all Americans but may hit harder in impoverished black communities.
“On top of everything else, Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist,” the former president said.
Decades later, in 1994, then-Sen. Biden drafted a crime bill that “caused sentencing disparities that devastated the black community,” President Trump said.
After laying out his case for branding President Biden as a racist, the former president said, off-the-cuff, “This is a helluva lot more of a speech than you thought you were gonna get, isn’t it, huh? ... It’s called, ‘Let’s tell it like it is,’ right?”
The crowd sprang to its feet, hooting with laughter, applauding, and chanting, “USA! USA! USA!” for 30 full seconds.
The campaign took issue with several of his past statements, including one that “compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched.”
A Warm Republican Welcome
But President Trump and other speakers said longtime Democrats such as President Biden have forsaken “everything that black Americans care about.”BCF Vice President Quenton Jordan told the audience that he has seen the black conservative movement expand dramatically after being told that such a movement “couldn’t exist.”
More blacks are turning conservative, he said, because they care about what he calls “the four F’s: Family, Faith, Freedom, and Finances.”
President Trump pointed out that some large cities have been dominated by Democrats for about a century—and those places are largely deteriorating and crime-ridden. “They’ve thrown black Americans overboard,” President Trump said.
He hammered the Biden administration for failing to enforce U.S. immigration laws and for Democrat leaders treating illegal immigrants to food, clothing, and shelter in high-end hotel rooms. Yet many other Americans, “our veterans, our blacks, our Hispanics...are living in the streets with nothing!” he said.
That statement earned him a partial standing ovation.
“If you want strong borders, safe neighborhoods, rising wages, new jobs, great education, and the return of the American dream, then congratulations, you are a Republican!” he said.
He pledged to prioritize those issues and declared, “I and the Republican Party will fight for the black community like you’ve never seen before.”
South Carolina GOP Chair Drew McKissick sees President Trump, as the leading Republican, on the upswing in his state and nationwide with minorities.
Despite President Biden being declared the 2020 winner, “Donald Trump got a larger percentage of the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Asian American vote, than any Republican candidate for president since Richard Nixon in 1972.”
“That is a dagger aimed right in the heart of the Democrat Party,” he said. “And they are worried sick about it.”
