Capehart: Black Support for Trump Is a ‘False Narrative’

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Biden: “Graduates, this is what we are up against: extremist forces, they’re lying against the meaning and message in Morehouse. They peddle a fiction, a caricature of wqhat being a man is about. Tough talk. Abusing power. Bigotry. Their idea of being a man is toxic”
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NAWAZ: “Here now is how former President Trump addressed a crowd in The Bronx last night.”

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TURMP: “These millions and millions and millions of people that are coming into our country — the biggest impact and the biggest negative impact is against our black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.”
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NAWAZ: “Jonathan, those are two very different kinds of messages, yet Mr. Trump has made inroads with some of these voters of color. Why do you think that is?”
CAPEHART: “Okay, buckle up. (Laughter) This inroads, this notion that Trump has made inroads is a result of a New York Times/Siena poll that came out in February where, shockingly, it said that Trump was getting 23 percent of black support. Now, when this — when I was confronted with this, I was like, do you even know the sample size? Sample size. Because I don’t believe that. And you ask any black pollster, and they’re like, ‘Um, I’s not there.’ The sample size on that poll was 119 respondents for a national poll.”
NAWAZ: “You think it’s a false narrative?”
CAPEHART: “I think it’s a false narrative. We go through this every four years, will black voters show up? Oh, the support is softening. Oh, my God. It feels like, to lots of us, that these narratives are perpetuated so that, if the Democrat loses, no matter what race, oh, well, the African Americans didn’t show up, so it’s their fault. And with the president’s speech, yes, he made the moral argument about democracy and masculinity and everything, but he also talked specifics, $16 billion invested in HBCUs, cutting black child poverty. What got the biggest applause line was student debt relief. I mean, he is combining an economic message with the moral message and knowing who his audience is. And Donald Trump, this is not about getting black voters to vote for him. This is not about getting Latino voters to vote for him, because there were quite a few Hispanic-Americans there at that rally in The Bronx.”
NAWAZ: “In The Bronx last night, yeah.”
CAPEHART: “But this isn’t about courting them. This is about a permission structure for white voters on the periphery who look and hear language like that and think, ‘I don’t like that. I don’t like him. I don’t like the way that sounds. But, wait, he’s in the South Bronx talking to those people. Maybe he’s not that bad.’ That’s outrageous.”