Trump’s Racist Reach

A Newly Minted Felon Pretends That He Too Fights the Man

“He's the victim that often times some of their communities were. And you see them swinging. Look at the African-American vote. That’s swinging over to Donald Trump in spades.” - Eric Trump 

So it’s come to this: Trump doing Black voter outreach after his conviction on 34 felony charges because now The Man - this waterboy for billionaires, white, rich, nepo-baby real estate princeling - is pretending that he fights The Man. 

We saw this argument coming a while ago. When Trump released his golden sneaker, a Fox News host went on air to opine that Black voters, especially those in the “inner city,” would now back Trump “because they love sneakers.” As indictments against him piled up, and he was convicted of fraud, sexual assault, and now election interference, Trumpers started openly saying that his claim of legal persecution will attract Black voters, who do in fact face too-frequent injustice at the hands of the police and courts. 

But any potential Black supporter will have to carve out an exception for Trump’s tradition of racist rhetoric, dog-whistling, “fine people on both sides,” and constant appeal to white fear and white identity.

Almost at the hour that Eric sent out his bizarrely racist (in spades) cross-racial appeal, his Dad was doing some racist fear-mongering from the lobby of Trump Tower. In his first post-conviction no-questions press conference, he looked wobbly and unleashed a demented rant that veered between the two poles of his appeal - portraying himself as persecuted and fomenting fear of incoming brown hordes. The comprehensibility bar for his speeches is so low that the media entirely overlooked a nonsensical and yet utterly racist aside: “Congo, Africa, has just released a lotta people from jail,” he said. “A lotta people, a lotta people from their prisons and jails and brought ‘em into the United States of America. That’s what’s happening to our country.” 

Congo, Africa. Whistle, whistle, here little doggie. 

Trump seems to have added the anecdote to his repertoire this spring, spewing it often enough that the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo felt moved to issue denials. In March when he started flinging it around, journalists looked into it. 

“Everything he is saying isn’t true,” Democratic Republic of Congo spokesperson Patrick Muyaya Katembwe told CNN. Asked specifically about Trump’s claims about Congolese prisons being emptied of violent criminals, he said, “Never ever, it’s not true.” And, he said, “We want him to stop” telling these stories, since “it’s very bad for the country.” Serge Mombouli, the Republic of Congo’s ambassador to the US, said in an email to CNN on Friday: “There is no truth or any sign nor a single fact supporting such a claim or statement.”

Total lie, but oh well, with Trump, it never hurts to try and it would look so good on a Fox NEWS ALERT chyron! It could be made more “true” still, alas, if David Pecker was still on the campaign’s payroll.

After the verdict, a letter writer to the Wall Street Journal suggested (deadpan, serious, not, presumably, satire) that Trump had a great new opportunity with the criminal vote: “What if Mr. Trump’s legal woes also present a rare opportunity for the GOP to connect with the millions who have faced similar criminal injustices? The 20 million felons in the U.S. can’t vote in many states, but their loved ones certainly can. Mr. Trump should be their champion and expand the GOP coalition.” 

It is certainly true that Trump’s felony conviction will penetrate the awareness of Americans of any race who do not normally read or watch political news. He and his Republican party lackeys went into overdrive claiming political persecution and the campaign claims it raised tens of millions in the 24 hours after the verdict. Most political analysts think the felony label is going to go in Biden’s favor, simply because it is deeply negative information reaching the consciousness of independent, low-information voters - not his MAGA fans -  a deciding sliver of the electorate up for grabs. 

But the notion that Trump, as a convicted felon could haul in specifically Black votes, is a mini-trend in Trump political analysis right now, if not actual Trump strategy. “Guilty Verdict Fuels Trump Courtship of Black Voters,” the political website Axios wrote a day after the conviction, without much evidence of actual courtship. (Trump’s Bronx rally was attended by mostly white people who, one would have to assume, normally give that part of the city a wide berth.) But Axios referenced a New York Times poll from last November that saw Black voters “drifting” a little toward Trump in six swing states. Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016, but the polls showed him winning 22 percent of the Black vote in six swing states. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12 percent of the Black vote since the 1960s.

It’s certainly possible that there are some in the ranks of Black American men - as there are among all groups of voters - who appreciate the MAGA movement’s combination of misogyny, paranoia, and conspiracy theories, and who might feel a kinship with Trump’s claim of persecution after the felony conviction. 

Black men make up a disproportionate number, by race, of American men convicted of felonies and incarcerated. Where they part ways with Donald of course, is that if any of them had ever uttered a single sentence of the litany of threats and abuse Trump flung at his judge and prosecutors in Manhattan over the last months, they would have been clapped behind bars. And it’s a fair guess that few Black felons will ever know what it feels like to have an ex-NYPD goon on call to step out the front door and beat people in the street or bust into a doctor’s office and grab potentially embarrassing medical records.

I’ll go out on a limb here and bet that in November, Black men will be a tiny, insignificant subset of Trump’s true voter demographic, but any flicker of an increase in their support, like the greater and more disgusting support of white women, will attract a lot of attention. 

But let’s be clear: Trump’s ride or die, his team of White Hypermasculine Thugs, are curdled angry men who feel persecuted by the system they believe they’re entitled to control, victimized by women and, if caught beating them up, by the law. And most of them are white. Team Trump is powered by the resentments of deadbeat dads, wife abusers, men with drunk driving or road rage license suspensions or gun violations, and at the higher income levels, by white-collar tax cheats, multi-level marketing scam artists, securities fraudsters, and golf cheats. 

On his first outing as a convicted felon, Trump swanned into an Ultimate Fight Championship match in Newark Saturday night. With Kid Rock‘s trailer park anthem American Bad Ass blaring, he took his seat, while the crowd cheered and then started chanting Fuck Biden. 

UFC cage fight matches are grisly, violent, bloody spectacles (nine of the contestants that night alone were put on medical suspensions for wounds from broken noses to lacerated heads and broken bones by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board afterward). The longtime president of the UFC, Dana White, escorted Trump through the throng. You will not be surprised to know that White was seen on video slapping his wife in Cabo San Lucas balcony on a recent New Year's Eve. 

Beyond the stadium walls, the organized branch of Trump’s thugs, the all-male ultra-violent Proud Boys, have regrouped and are “standing by” once again in preparation for the 2024 election. After January 6, four of their former leaders were convicted of sedition, including Enrique Tarrio, who is serving a 22-year sentence for sedition. Seventy more were charged with lesser crimes. 

But rather than fall into decline, a Reuters report earlier this week found the Boys thriving and growing, albeit with control and organization now run state by state. In recent weeks, the group has become more present at Trump events, clad in their signature black and yellow, with their faces often hidden under gaiter masks emblazoned with the PB logo.

After Trump’s conviction, the Ohio Proud Boys branch vowed “war” and posted a video of street brawls with the caption “Fighting Solves Everything.” The Miami branch posted a recruitment call. Reuters found a “Proud Boy Prayer” on an active website promoting a New Jersey chapter: “Strengthen us Brothers with power and hard fists to help us defend the right and defeat the wrong.”

Their resurgence and resilience have surprised experts on right-wing extremism since so many of their members have paid for their association with jail time. But they’re still going strong. When they’re not marching around at Trump rallies (they told reporters they were at a recent Trump rally on the Jersey Shore to face down any anti-Trumpers) they can be found baiting and beating protesting leftists for fun and status.. “The amazing thing is that so many people from the Proud Boys can be in jail and yet you have these active chapters,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said. 

These men are, of course, Trump’s true demographic. They love his felonies. And they love violence. His people are counting on further trials and convictions to draw in more members of this lunatic masculinity crowd, always itching for a fight, storming out of the junkyards, arenas, and trailer parks and into the streets looking for heads to bash. Whether or not they vote, Trump the Felon personally wants and needs their vicarious intimidation now more than ever.