Black people are not a monolith, but we have, overwhelmingly, rejected Donald Trump. Decades of being anti-Black in situations both public and private may not have hurt him much as a reality game show host, but after five years listening to him obsess over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, just 8% of Black voters thought Trump was worthy to serve as the first Black president’s successor. Trump famously vowed to get 95% of the Black vote in 2020, and let’s just say … it seems unlikely. A Sept. 13-16 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicates Trump’s managed to win over just 5% of Black voters this go-round—and that was before recent headlines about him blaming Black people for systemic inequality.
It’s clear Trump is frustrated by his inability to connect with Black people, to be liked by them, to be admired by them. In fact, he’s been telling us for years now that Black people should love him more than any other president—except his favorite human yardstick, of course. Yet rather than lift one tiny orange finger to drag the truth closer to his hyperbole, Trump just says it louder, even as he blows every anti-Black dog whistle he can to his supporters.
Until now, apparently. At a Black Voices for Trump rally in Atlanta on Friday, Trump revealed a sloppy PowerPoint he called the “Black Economic Empowerment ‘Platinum Plan,’” or, as The Root’s Ishena Robinson more accurately called It, “his plan for pandering to Black Americans in the 11th hour of the 2020 Elections.” Included within the bullet points are ideas Trump didn’t come up with, ideas that reveal an ignorance of Black American priorities and needs, and a bunch of fake promises dressed up to seem like action items.
As widely noted, bullet points like “Make Juneteenth a national holiday” or “Make lynching a federal hate crime” are not Trump’s ideas, even if Trump tried to spin the proposed ”Juneteenth in Tulsa” edition of his Traveling Super Spreader Hate Rally as a net positive.
Mr. Trump said a black Secret Service agent told him the meaning of Juneteenth as the president was facing criticism for initially planning to hold his first campaign rally in three months on the day.
[...]
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Mr. Trump said, referring to news coverage of the rally date. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
Mr. Trump said he polled many people around him, none of whom had heard of Juneteenth. Mr. Trump paused the interview to ask an aide if she had heard of Juneteenth, and she pointed out that the White House had issued a statement last year commemorating the day. Mr. Trump’s White House has put out statements on Juneteenth during each of his first three years.
As for making lynching a hate crime? The Senate passed a largely symbolic bill doing just that in December 2018, co-sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker, vice presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, and the only Black Republican in Congress—South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Trump also made a clever vow to prosecute the increasingly irrelevant Ku Klux Klan as a terrorist organization; that was really just a paper-cloaked promise to his followers. Beloved Trump bogeymen “Antifa” are also set to become official terrorists under the BEEPP. (I know they wrote this on the fly, but did nobody on the team have time to review the acronym? Nobody?)
One striking bullet point included a vow to implement “diversity training” in the police departments of “American’s great cities.” It doesn't bear notice for the typo or for the much-needed concept; rather, it was an unexpected move in light of the ban on diversity training the Trump administration had issued just days earlier.
The majority of the one-liners that populate Trump’s last-ditch effort to enchant Black voters are too vague to be analyzed, much less measured in one day, under his cheesy “promises made, promises kept” banner. Some bullet points are self-congratulatory (“Reach even greater levels of historic employment and wage growth”) or too broad in scope (“Eliminate Long-Standing Healthcare Disparities”), while others are aimed at Republicans (“Defend religious freedom exemptions” and “full school choice”). Even the best of the ideas aren’t designed for the Black community—increased child care credits, larger Pell grants, and “favorable trade deals to bring back manufacturing jobs” are all goals—good goals—that would benefit all Americans. For that reason alone, we know Trump’s BEEPP is clearly a hollow plank in his platform, as he has never presided over this nation with the welfare of all Americans in mind. The rich ones? Sure. The white ones? Always. But mostly for the rich white ones. As my colleague Meteor Blades pointed out this afternoon, this hastily created list might have meant something in early 2017. Unfortunately for Black Americans, and for Donald Trump, it’s 2020, we’re less than six weeks out from a national referendum on his shitshow of a presidency, and it means nothing in the face of Trump’s rhetoric, actions, and nearly four years of dangerous policy as the leader of a party notorious for being the opposite of friendly to Black people.
As Ja’Ron Smith, a Black man and one of Trump’s advisers, told NPR Friday, "Today is historic because for the first time you have a Republican president and a Republican agenda that's focused on the economic empowerment of the Black community." It’s sad that it’s the very first time, and it’s insulting that it was such a careless effort.
Black people are not a monolith, but we have, overwhelmingly, rejected Donald Trump. A zero-hour PowerPoint isn’t going to change that.
When you wake up on November 4, we need to know we did absolutely everything to save our democracy. Sign up with 2020 Victory, and make phone calls to battleground state voters to get out the vote. All you need is a personal computer, and a burning desire to throw Donald Trump out of office.