DETROIT (KeynoteUSA) — Donald Trump will use back-to-back visits Saturday to court Black voters and a conservative group that has been accused of attracting white supremacists as the Republican presidential candidate works to form a coalition of historically divergent battlefield interests. of Michigan. .
Trump plans to host an afternoon panel discussion at an African-American church in downtown Detroit. He will later appear at the “Popular Convention” of Turning Point Action, a group that, according to the Anti-Defamation League, has been linked to a variety of extremists.
About 24 hours before Trump planned to deliver a speech at the conference, well-known white supremacist Nick Fuentes entered the Turning Point convention hall surrounded by a group of cheering supporters. Security quickly escorted him out.
Fuentes created political problems for Trump after Fuentes attended a private lunch with the former president and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West at Trump’s Florida estate in 2022.
Trump’s weekend plans underscore the evolving political forces that will shape this fall’s presidential election as he tries to deny Democratic President Joe Biden a second term.
Few states are expected to matter more in November than Michigan, which Biden won by less than 3 percentage points four years ago. And few groups of voters matter more to Democrats than African Americans, who formed the backbone of Biden’s political base in 2020. But now, less than five months before Election Day, Black voters are expressing modest signs of disappointment with the 81-year-old president. Democrat.
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Michael Whatley, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Michigan Republicans at a dinner Friday that the state couldn’t be more important.
“Everyone knows that if we don’t win Michigan, we won’t have a Republican in the White House,” Whatley said. “Let me be more direct: If we don’t win Michigan, we’re not going to have Donald Trump in the White House.”
“We are going to determine the fate of the world in these November elections,” he added.
Trump maintains that he can attract more black voters thanks to his economic and border security message, and that his felony charges make him more identifiable.
Democrats offer a competitive prospect.
“Donald Trump is very dangerous for Michigan, dangerous for America and dangerous for Black people,” Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, an African American, said Friday.
He said it was “offensive” that Trump was addressing the Turning Point conference, which was being held at the same convention center that was “the epicenter of his effort to steal the election.”
In fact, dozens of angry Trump loyalists shouted “Stop the counting!” descended on the TCF Center, now called Huntington Place, the day after the 2020 presidential election as absentee votes were being counted. Local media captured scenes of protesters outside and in the lobby. The police prevented them from entering the counting area.
The protests took place after Trump tweeted that “they are finding Biden votes everywhere” in several states, including Michigan.
The false notion that Biden benefited from widespread voter fraud has been widely debunked by election officials from both parties, the judicial system and members of the former Trump administration. Still, Trump continues to promote that misinformation, which he echoed throughout the conservative convention over the weekend.
Speaking from the main stage, Turning Point founder and CEO Charlie Kirk falsely described the conference venue as “a crime scene.”
However, such extreme rhetoric does not appear to have hurt Trump’s standing among black voters.
Among Black adults, Biden’s approval has fallen from 94% when he began his term in January 2021 to just 55%, according to an KeynoteUSA-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in March.
About 8 in 10 black voters have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, and about two-thirds say they have a “very unfavorable” opinion of him, according to an KeynoteUSA-NORC poll conducted in June. About 2 in 10 black voters have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Trump.
Trump won 8% of the black vote in 2020, according to KeynoteUSA VoteCast. And in what is expected to be a close election, even a modest change could have consequences.
Maurice Morrison, 67, a lifelong Detroit resident, plans to attend Trump’s appearance at the church. Morrison acknowledged that Trump, for whom he voted twice before and plans to do so again, is deeply unpopular in his community and even within his home.
“Once he decided to run for president as a Republican, that automatically made him a racist. That’s his middle name now: ‘Trump is racist,’ everyone I talk to, everyone I know, my family,” said Morrison, who is Black. “The man cares.”
Meanwhile, thousands of conservative activists, most of them young and white, eagerly awaited Trump’s keynote speech Saturday night.
Turning Point has emerged as a force in Republican politics in the Trump era, particularly among his “Make America Great Again” movement, despite the ADL’s warning that the group “continues to attract racists.”
“Numerous individuals associated with the group have made bigoted statements about the Black community, the LGBTQ community, and other groups,” the ADL, an international anti-hate group, wrote in a background memo. “While TPUSA (Turning Point USA) leaders say they reject white supremacist ideology, well-known white nationalists have attended their events.”
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet dismissed the ADL’s characterization as “smears and lies.” He added that Turning Point has been preventing Fuentes from attending its events for “years.”
“The ADL is a scourge on the United States, sowing poison and division. They have completely lost their minds,” Kolvet said, describing the ADL’s criticism as “a badge of honor.”
Turning Point, long popular among Trump’s MAGA fringe, is now a central player in mainstream Republican politics. The group’s weekend speaking schedule featured a long list of established Republican politicians, including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R by Georgia. It also included former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who will report to prison on July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the US House of Representatives.
In his comments Friday night, Vivek Ramaswamy, who has become a fierce Trump ally since unsuccessfully challenging Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, called on conservatives to reject what he said was the acceptance of diversity on the part of Democrats.
“I am sick and tired of celebrating our diversity,” Ramaswamy charged. “It doesn’t mean anything unless there’s something bigger that brings us together.”
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