“I don’t care what the media tells you, Mr. Trump. We support you,” said Michaelah Montgomery, who hugged Trump during his recent stop in Atlanta.
After former President Donald Trump hosted young black students during a Chick-fil-A visit to Atlanta, Democratic strategists are throwing cold water on any suggestion that the viral moment signals broader support in his favor among young black voters.
“I don’t think it changes the established norm that Donald Trump has a pretty hostile agenda toward black people in general,” Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, told the Grio. “That’s not to say that all African-American voters will feel that way. This is not to say that outlier opinions do not exist.
On Wednesday, Trump visited a Chick-fil-A restaurant near Atlanta’s major HBCUs: Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College. The Republican presidential candidate, who faces four criminal charges — including one in Atlanta prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — greeted the mostly young, black customers and workers.
The former president, who was buying milkshakes for young customers, was greeted with smiles and joy, including from Michaelah Montgomery, who told him: “I don’t care what the media tells you, Mr. Trump, we support you. ” Trump then offered to hug Montgomery, who then said, “Tell my mom I made it! »
According to her LinkedIn account, Montgomery graduated from Clark Atlanta in 2020 and is the founder of Conserve the Culture, a conservative grassroots group. She appeared to suggest to Fox News on Friday that Chick-fil-A students were part of her organization.
Although Trump’s planned visit (the Chick-fil-A chain is owned by one of his golf club members) has attracted a lot of attention on social media, political experts say it doesn’t change the situation. Trump’s position with black voters.
“I don’t want to exaggerate a little viral moment at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta and make it seem like … Donald Trump is winning over black people,” said Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “He didn’t have many black people in 2020. He didn’t have this many black people in 2016. He won’t have this many black people in 2024.”
Although some polls last year indicated Trump gaining more than 22% among black voters in key battleground states, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 12% of black voters say support the Republican Party. According to Pew, Trump received 8% of the black vote in 2020.
However, several polls also indicate declining support among Black voters for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, primarily due to their feelings about the Biden administration’s economy and foreign policy. -Harris in favor of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“We just have to talk about these things in a real way that gets people to remember what the real record of the Trump presidency is (and) what the real record of the Biden presidency is,” Olasanoye said.
Reecie Colbert, political strategist and host of “The Reecie Colbert Show” on Sirius talk to a segment. young black voters who are “targeted by disinformation (and) misinformation.”
Some of this misinformation comes from rap culture, said Colbert, who noted that Montgomery was referencing rapper Lil Baby’s song “4PF.”
“I think she’s referring to these kinds of exploits by some of these rappers who are perpetuating this idea that Trump gave us stimmies (stimmie checks) and gave us money when the opposite is true “, she noted. “We’ve seen black businesses close, we’ve seen black unemployment rise, we’ve seen a lot of black wealth wiped out.”
In contrast, Colbert said, under the Biden-Harris administration, which also issued stimulus checks as part of the American Rescue Plan two months after taking office, black unemployment persisted at a record high and a significant return for small black businesses.
She added: “And don’t forget the fact that the child tax credit cut black child poverty in half for the year it existed. »
Colbert said that despite the numbers, there remains an “attraction” to Trump that perpetuates the “false idea that he was an economic boon to the country and black people.”
There’s also the Trump celebrity factor, noted Payne, who was the paid black media director for former Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run.
“There’s something about fame that takes over people and allows them to forget or compartmentalize other things that are out there, and that’s something unique about Trump,” he said. “I think his fame and his brand have an outsized impact on their view of him. But I think it would be unfair to characterize this as a quality reserved for black voters.
Payne said Democrats will have to “persuade” young black voters rather than simply motivate them to “participate” like in years past.
“What’s more important to do is continue to make this point to a lot of African-American voters, young African-American voters, to remind them of the reality of what has been the Trump presidency,” he said. “To remind them of things they may have forgotten.”
“This is a party that has stood in the way of student loan forgiveness for young black voters,” Olasanoye said of the Republican Party. “This is a party that disagrees with young black voters on climate justice.”
Trump, he argued, is not running an “issues-based campaign…by any means.” He added: “I don’t believe what Donald Trump says, I believe what he does, and I think black people should too. »
Olasanoye said the challenge for Democrats is that “we’re not talking about it in a way that resonates with people, and particularly not with black voters.” He continued: “We must act quickly because there are only 207 days until the most important election of our lifetime. »
He added: “If we lose this election, it’s because we didn’t tell our own story. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
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