Donald Trump declared in a June 14 interview with Semafor that there’s no way he can be racist because he has “so many Black friends.”
“I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast. They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist—and I’m not racist!” he said in responses to claims that he’s a racist.
The 78-year-old former president went so far as to say that he can relate to Black voters because he claims that he’s being discriminated against by the criminal justice system.
“I think it’s through osmosis,” he explained. “They see what’s happening. And a lot of them feel that similar things have happened to them. I mean, they’ve expressed that to me very plainly and very clearly. They see what’s happened to them.”
As President Joe Biden and Trump approach the November election, their campaigns have focused on gaining the attention and support of Black voters.
According to an NBC News poll, Biden is leading against Trump with Black voters but has seen a decline in numbers. Biden leads “71% to 13%, but that’s down from 2020 exit polls, which found an 87% to 12% margin for Biden.”
This is not the first time Trump has boasted about his popularity with Black voters. Back in 2020, Trump claimed that he did more for the Black community than he gets credit for.
“I’ve said this and I say it openly and not a lot of people dispute it: I’ve done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. Nobody has even been close.”
Trump’s claims have brought up some of his past infractions against minority populations, most notably his very public calls for the death penalty against the now-exonerated Central Park Five in 1989.
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