Around this time eight years ago, Donald Trump believed he had a chance to make real inroads with Black voters, despite his lengthy record of overt racism. “Look at how much African-American communities are suffering from Democratic control,” the then-candidate said in reference to Barack Obama’s presidency. “To those I say the following: what do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?”
New York magazine's Jon Chait noted soon after, “In reality, things could definitely get worse, and it’s very easy to imagine that an ignorant, racist demagogue as president would indeed have this very effect.”
With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that Chait was right. Soon after taking office, Trump not only ignited ugly racial controversies, the Republican also took steps to hurt urban investment and block enforcement of a federal housing policy that requires communities to address patterns of racial residential segregation.
As Trump’s term continued, Black voters suffered greater losses. The Atlantic’s David Graham explained in 2019, “Trump has sabotaged a law that guaranteed health insurance for many African Americans. He has undermined protections for voting rights. His Justice Department has stopped going after police departments that discriminated against African Americans. He has rolled back environmental protections. Beyond policy, he has used rhetoric that suggests the citizenship of African Americans and other minorities is conditional and less than that of white Americans.”
By 2020, Black communities were also feeling the brunt of the Covid crisis that Trump tragically mismanaged, as well as the consequent recession that caused widespread harm during the Republican’s final year in office.
It’s against this backdrop that the presumptive GOP nominee, encouraged by polling showing a surprising number of African-American voters giving Trump a fresh look, is recycling his rhetoric from 2016.
Speaking to a largely white audience in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, the former president once again said he had a familiar question for Black voters: “What they hell do you have to lose?”
As it turns out, the answer is readily available. We already know, for example, that unemployment among Black workers recently reached an all-time low, thanks in large part to President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, which Trump is desperate to reverse. The uninsured rate among Black families also reached an all-time low, and African-American communities are among the beneficiaries of the sharp improvement in the nation’s crime rate.
But just as notable is the former president’s vision for the near future. It was just a couple of months ago, for example, when Axios reported that in a prospective second term, Trump and his team intend to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.”
Asked for comment, the Republican’s campaign didn’t exactly deny its interest in rolling back policies designed to address systemic racism.
A few weeks later, Trump sat down with Time magazine’s Eric Cortellessa and said, “I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed either.” The GOP candidate added that he hopes to focus on the “problem” related to the “bias against white” in a second term.
What do Black voters have to lose from a second Trump term? That need not be a rhetorical question, and between the former president’s indefensible record and unsettling future plans, the answer seems painfully obvious.