It’s safe to say that Donald Trump was never going to win the Black vote in 2020, but did the events surrounding the murder of George Floyd contribute to the former president’s overall downfall? We are learning that Trump was very concerned this was the case.
Author Michael C. Bender covers this in his upcoming book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost. The book isn’t out until August 10th, but the Wall Street Journal reporter published an excerpt on Politico.com today. In it, Bender writes that Trump blamed son-in-law Jared Kushner for the response to “civil unrest that was sweeping the country” in the wake of Floyd’s death.
As protesters poured into the streets of the nation’s capital and major municipalities, Trump privately told advisers that he wished he’d been quicker to support police and more aggressive in his pushback against protesters.
Trump had staked nearly his entire campaign in 2016 around a law-and-order image, and now groaned that the criminal justice reform that Kushner had persuaded him to support made him look weak and—even worse—hadn’t earned him any goodwill among Black voters.
“I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks—it’s always Jared telling me to do this,” Trump said to one confidante on Father’s Day. “And they all f—— hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.”
Check out the full excerpt below.
According to NBC News, “Biden held 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group.”
