Two polls released in the last week have confirmed what Republicans hope and Democrats fear: support in the black community for President Trump is rising.
On Monday, Rasmussen reports noted, “ICYMI: Last Friday we showed Black Likely Voter approval for @realDonaldTrump at 34%. We then found out that a recent widely quoted @EmersonPolling Registered Voters based poll showed Black Voter approval for @POTUS at 34.5%.”
ICYMI: Last Friday we showed Black Likely Voter approval for @realDonaldTrump at 34%.
We then found out that a recent widely quoted @EmersonPolling Registered Voters based poll showed Black Voter approval for @POTUS at 34.5%. https://t.co/SS9K9WS4Ix
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) November 25, 2019
The Emerson Poll, released November 21, indeed showed Trump with 34.5% of black registered voter approval. RedState noted, “Thirty four percent approval for President Donald Trump. And that’s not an outlier with other Rasmussen tallies, the average has actually gone up since last year when it was in the 20s.”
Real Clear Politics noted in October 2018:
Even 20 percent African-American support for Trump would all but dismantle Democratic Party presidential hopes for 2020. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election with 88 percent of the black vote. That was about a six-point falloff from Barack Obama’s share of the black vote in 2012.
Earlier this month, Kanye West advised blacks not to feel they owe fealty to the Democratic Party, as reported by Page Six, asserting:
Own your power. Your power is not to just vote Democrat for the rest of our lives. That’s not the power. The power is when I talk to my lawyer … I put on my trench coat and said, ‘We’re moving these factories to America, and that’s how it’s going to be’ — and it’s lovely. We moved the headquarters to Cody, Wyoming … Our goal is to bring the manufacturing back to America — South America, North America — bring it back stateside and to present jobs for people back here.
West continued, “We’re brainwashed out here, bro. Come on, man. This is a free man talking. Democrats had us voting for Democrats with food stamps for years. What are you talking about guns in the 80s, taking the fathers out the home, Plan B, lowering our votes, making us abort children.”
In September, NBA Hall-Of-Famer Charles Barkley, remembering his advice to Democrat Doug Jones when Jones was running for the Senate in Alabama, recalled, “I said ‘Doug, I’m going to support you. I’m going to try to get every black person in Alabama to vote for you.’ And it worked out. We won for the first time in 40 years. But I said, ‘We need to start holding you Democrats accountable’ because they’ve been taking black people’s votes – and they only talk to black people every four years. All of these politicians only talk to black people every four years because they want their vote.”
In August, CNN host Don Lemon targeted a black pastor who met with Trump. Lemon said to Rev. Bill Owens, the founder of the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), “So the president tweeted today he was looking forward to his meeting with wonderful inner-city pastors. Any concern for you that the president used this meeting with black leaders to insulate himself from the criticism?”
Owens responded, “I don’t think so. I don’t think that at all because I have been to the White House four times in five months. So it was nothing about insulating him from anything. He wanted to hear from us, what our concerns were and what he could do to help us.”