Opinion: What Black voters will never forget about Donald Trump

Opinion by Clay Cane

(CNN) — Editor’s note: Clay Cane is a SiriusXM radio host and the author of “The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump,” which will be published in January 2024. Follow him on X. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

From his infamous “what the hell do you have to lose?” remark to his shallow “Platinum Plan” economic agenda for Black Americans, former President Donald Trump’s outreach to the Black community over the years has been little more than political theater, devoid of real substance. But the performance-artist-in-chief might just have outdone himself.

Trump’s latest disingenuous stunt came last month with the boast about winning supposed backing from Black Lives Matter, a group he has disparaged in the past as “a symbol of hate.”

In a Truth Social post last month in which he wrote that he had “done more for Black people than any other President,” Trump wrote that he was proud to have the backing of an individual who purported to be a leading member of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Rhode Island. Trump wrote that he had spoken to the man, Mark Fisher, and that he was “very honored to have his and BLM’s support.”

Trump touting alleged backing from BLM is eye-rolling, considering his years-long attacks on the group, including remarks a few years ago that Black Lives Matter is “bad for Black people.”

The former President might have won Fisher’s endorsement, but Black Lives Matter wants nothing to do with either of them: Fisher is said by leaders of the group to have no current affiliation with the chapter in Rhode Island, which has denounced him as “an imposter.”

Whether or not Trump genuinely believes that Fisher is a leader of BLM, the former president seems to be cynically banking on Black Americans having short memories.

Most of us, however, haven’t forgotten his track record, from his stance on health care, including his recent attacks on Obamacare, to his opposition to greater diversity in the workplace to his efforts to restrict voting rights. We cannot forget that when Trump got started in real estate decades ago, his family was accused of denying rentals to Black prospective tenants, and eventually settled out of court.

And few of us will ever forget that when America found the fortitude to elect a Black man as the nation’s president, it was Trump who waged a racist, conspiracist “birther” campaign to try to undermine and delegitimize then-President Barack Obama.

But Trump’s playbook is not new: It’s the standard script followed by various GOP presidential candidates who — despite a tarnished record on matters of racial equity — invariably attempt 11th-hour appeals to Black voters.

Think back to 2004, when then-President George W. Bush — in a move as disrespectful as any deployed by Trump — cynically voiced support for a ban on gay marriage in a bid appeal to socially conservative Black voters.

Bush may have hoped Black voters would suffer a bout of collective amnesia and forget the war waged by his Justice Department on the voting rights of a Black man in Mississippi named Ike Brown or his attacks on affirmative action. As it turns out, they didn’t forget. He got a meager 11% of the Black vote in 2004, a showing that was only marginally better than that of earlier Republican presidential candidates.

For all of Trump’s checkered history with Black voters, there persists a curious refrain this presidential campaign season that he is gaining ground with them, at least as evidenced by the polls.

Over the past month, The New York Times, Politico, and The Washington Post have all reported about Trump making inroads with Black voters while Biden is said to be losing support with the group. Those reports feel like déjà vu for me, and I don’t buy them.

Even as far back as Ronald Reagan in 1981, there were predictions that the GOP was reclaiming Black voters. Trump’s gains with Black voters in 2020 were given prominent news coverage by  media outlets from ABC News to Politico.

The same storyline was exhaustively covered in the 2022 midterm election, as countless outlets reported that Biden and Democrats were flailing with Black voters and that Trump-backed candidates were breaking through. Back in 2012, there were reports that President Barack Obama was struggling with Black voters. He would go on to earn a larger share of Black voters than any presidential candidate in the modern era.

I’ll say what some political strategists have avoided mentioning: polls don’t tell the whole story. They’re the crystal balls pundits turn to when the news cycle slows. Bad headlines may sell newspapers and garner clicks, but some polling methods are famously flawed and there’s a long history of surveys underestimating Black support for the Democratic candidate.

As someone who hosts a live show on SiriusXM for two hours a day, five days a week on a Black radio channel, my experience is anecdotal, but I can tell from my audience that they’re tired of being inundated by negative polling stories. It’ll take more than last-minute efforts from the GOP — especially ploys like lavishing praise on figures like Mark Fisher — to win over Black voters.

The Republican Party barely has a cohesive political platform, let alone a substantial stance that addresses the concerns of Black communities on gun legislation, health care, fair wages, support for Black businesses, or addressing systemic racism.

Democrats aren’t perfect, but the Biden-Harris administration has managed some significant victories for Black communities. These wins range from substantial support for HBCUs to the SBA doubling its backing of Black-owned businesses in fiscal year 2023.

History suggests that there may be a floor: No Democratic presidential candidate in the past half-century has earned less than 80 percent of the Black vote.

Some prominent political experts have said — as did African American pollster Cornell Belcher in a discussion on NBC television recently — that they see little risk of Trump making sizable inroads with Black voters, and are tired of polling suggesting tells make gains with this group.

“Enough with all the polling. It’s not predictive of what’s going to happen in the presidential (election)… We use polling to see what the problem is with a campaign and how you fix the problem,” Belcher said.

“I’m more worried about third-party voting than I am worried about Trump,” he added. He remarked that in his recent surveys, when Black voters were asked to name what they see as the greatest threat to the African American community, a plurality cited “not inflation, not crime” — but the “re-election of Donald Trump.”

Not that Democrats should sit on their hands or allow themselves to be lulled into complacency because of past overwhelming support from Black voters, experts said.

What does have Democrats worried is potential voter apathy, and the possibility that third party candidates could win a sizable share of the Black vote. “We have to get the numbers up and we have to get African American voters out to vote,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake to the New York Times recently.

The Biden campaign seems to have gotten the message about the need to excite Black voters: It recently launched radio ads across Black and Latino-owned stations, while Vice President Kamala Harris took a month-long tour of historically Black colleges and universities to hear from young Black voters. They’ve got almost a year to gin up their enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, how credible are Trump’s own predictions of huge gains with Black voters? Not very. He recently claimed that his support had risen by 4 or 5 times what it had been since his mug shot was released in August.

And if there’s even a grain of truth that Black voters are departing the Democratic Party, I predict that cynical Republican policies will invariably help to push Black voters right back into the Democratic fold.

One party enacts Confederate Heritage Month, the other agrees Confederates were treasonous. One party aims to destroy the Voting Rights Act, most members of the other party want to restore the Voting Rights Act. A leading figure of one party believes there were “personal” benefits to slavery; the other party rejects the notion that enslaved people benefited from being in bondage.

The 2024 presidential election isn’t a choice between the lesser of two evils. Trump’s plans are to return to the anti-immigrant priorities of his first term and to institute a future dictatorship, among other reprehensible policies.

I can assure you that Black voters are paying close attention, and they won’t be duped.

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