Trump Tried to Pitch Xenophobia to Black People and Failed Miserably
At the conference for the National Association of Black Journalists, the former president couldn’t get his racism out of the way
Much is being said about former president Donald Trump’s disastrous appearance at a National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) event on Wednesday. His reaction to being called out for many of his racist remarks is what many are talking about.
Not only did he fail to respond to why Black people should trust him after having his own statements read back to him, but he went further by doubling down and acting precisely the way his past comments would suggest.
In other words, he hasn’t learned a damn thing.
His outright disdain for Black women was made abundantly clear. While people like Charlie Kirk try to portray Trump as defiant by refusing “to pander just a little,” they’re ignoring Black people roasting Trump badly on social media.
Conservatives are so tone-deaf about what it all means that Kirk went so far as to say that his appearance would get Trump “even more support with Blacks and Hispanics,” as if he knows our communities better than us. A weird take indeed.
The most outstanding issue in all of this is how conservatives are intentionally not listening to Black voices. Instead, like Trump questioning Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Blackness and telling Black people she’s not Black, Republicans are essentially telling Black people and Latinos what to think.
They want to define what is and isn’t Black as if we somehow don’t know.
Their problem boils down to one thing: racism. They’re throwing Latinos into the mix because, to them, Black people and Latinos are equally inferior to white people.
Thanks in large part to their outright ignorance and thinking being edgy is going to win anyone in our communities over, the racism that is so pervasive among conservatives has again become a major point of contention for the Trump camp. He and his cohorts are wholly responsible for it too.
And yet, they still don’t see it.
One of the more interesting parts of the NABJ event was when Trump tried to throw immigration into the conversation. When he was asked about what his message was at the conference he immediately jumped to immigrants stealing Black jobs - which didn’t carry any weight. He was promptly asked what a Black job was. He responded by saying, “Anybody that has a job,” as the crowd laughed.
He then rambled on about immigration, called Harris the border czar (something she was never tasked with), continued to claim migrants were taking jobs, and claimed migrants that are coming to the U.S. are criminals from jails and mental institutions.
In a room full of journalists who likely know the truth about immigration better than he ever could, Trump’s baseless rambling was quickly shrugged off by moderators and the crowd.
“My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly, a lot of problems with it but one of the big problems, and a lot of the journalists in this room I know, I know a lot of them, and have great respect for, a lot of the journalists in this room are Black (crowd laughs), I will tell you, coming from the border, are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs,” Donald Trump rambling at the NABJ conference
The reason the message didn’t land is clear. It only added to the racism he expressed through the event. His disdain for nonwhite people became obvious once he proved, as Charlie Kirk has, that they see Black people and Latinos as equally subordinate to them.
They fail to realize that the excitement behind Harris has a lot to do with her running counter to Trump’s racism and possibly even President Biden’s obvious and unchecked prejudice.
The complexities of race in the U.S. are something Republican politicians and conservative voters will never get a grasp on if they continue to drown out, ignore, and demean nonwhite people while claiming to understand what it is the different communities need.
They act the way they do because they see themselves as having more support than they actually have. They think that if they stay on the current path that netted them a percentage point or two in our communities they will continue to garner more support.
Instead, they’re out here showing everyone who they really are: modern-day Klansmen. Republicans are losing support fast among white voters who would have voted for Trump over Biden. Meanwhile alienating everyone else.
I hope this serves as a lesson to Latinos supporting him.
I’m a freelance writer and journalist for The Antagonist Magazine and Unicorn Riot. Find me on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work become a paid subscriber or donate on Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp
The MAGApubs are nothing but a cult flushing itself down the toilet.
Modern day klansmen out to vote for the convicted serial rapist are indeed so full of themselves that they can’t see they’ve been outed from their hillbilly incel garb. Good job by the NABJ to show the loser of the popular vote has no clothes.