By Rebecca Shabad —NBCNews
Former President Donald Trump claimed in a new interview published Friday that he can’t be racist because he has “a lot of black friends.”
“I have so many black friends that if I were racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anyone else and quickly,” added the virtual Republican candidate in a wide-ranging interview with Semafor when asked how he responds to black voters who call him racist.
“They wouldn’t be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist, and I’m not!” he added.
[Qué hay detrás de las imágenes falsas donde Trump aparece rodeado de votantes negros]
The former president also reiterated comments that some black voters identify with him because he is also “being discriminated against” by the criminal justice system.
“I think it’s by osmosis. They see what’s happening. And a lot of them feel like similar things have happened to them,” Trump said. “I mean, they’ve expressed it to me very simply and very clearly. They see what happened to them.”
[Qué hay detrás de las imágenes falsas donde Trump aparece rodeado de votantes negros]
In recent months, the former president’s campaign has attempted to appeal to Black voters as enthusiasm for Democratic President Joe Biden has waned among this key demographic.
An NBC News poll in April showed Biden leading Trump among black voters: 71% to 13%. But that’s down from 2020 exit polls, which found a margin of between 87% and 12% for Biden.
This weekend, Trump will visit a church in Detroit, a city with a predominantly black population. He also recently held a rally in the Bronx in an attempt to win over black and Latino voters.
Black men are also included among Trump’s potential vice presidential picks, including Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
In fact, a super PAC affiliated with the Republican senator launched a campaign last week to attract voters of color to the Republican Party.
Trump has often boasted about how popular he believes he is among black voters.
During the 2020 presidential race, when he was in the White House, the former president said he had done more for Black people than anyone except perhaps President Abraham Lincoln.
“I have said this and I say it openly and not many people dispute it: I have done more for African Americans than anyone, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. No one’s even been close,” he said at the time.
Trump’s past actions have long been criticized by some black voters, including his calls for the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers in the 1989 Central Park Five case.
He was also a key driver of conspiracies that falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama, the first black president, was not born in the United States. And in 2020 he echoed attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that were based on her alleged ineligibility to run for office because her parents had immigrated to the United States.
