At 1:32 p.m. on Wednesday, Donald J. Trump called into a barbershop in Atlanta and did what very few Republican candidates usually do on the campaign trail: he asked the black community for their vote. “Mr. President, we were just talking about you!” the president told him. … deputy Byron Donaldswho was there visiting with other African-American Republicans. So Donalds, who is also being touted as a possible vice-presidential candidate, proceeded to put Trump on speakerphone, and the crowd listened intently and asked questions for 11 minutes. It was Trump in freestyle: He compared himself to Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra; he called Joe Biden “scum”; he said that “never before, any president, has done as much for the black community” as he has.
In 2020, Georgia, the site of the first presidential debate of the campaign, was one of the crucial states in Joe Biden’s victory, after an agonizing vote count plagued by false allegations of fraud by Trump. The victory of the current president, however, was not resounding. The state was decided by just 11,700 votes out of a total of five million. That margin is so, so tight that a slight swing in any demographic group can decide the presidency. And that explains why Trump’s team is devoting so much effort to courting the black vote.
According to polls and studies by Trump’s campaign, where he is eating up Biden’s groundis in the vote of black men, especially because of unemployment and inflation. And that is why this meeting is taking place in the barbershop of Rocky Jones, who is actually an immigrant from Panama who came to Atlanta after living in New York. In Atlanta, as in other traditionally black cities in the southern United States, barbershops are important meeting places for black men, where they talk about everything, listen to music, drink coffee and sometimes smoke a cigar or two. Politics is usually left aside, but in this case, Trump’s main black allies brought politics to the barber’s chair. No more and no less than two candidates to be vice president, Donalds himself and Ben Carson, who was already Secretary of Housing. Another congressman, Wesley Hunt. Businessmen. Traders. Radio presenters. And at the doors of the barbershop, where there was not a pin to drop, about twenty Georgians who heard the rumor that Trump was going to drop by, came with their American flags and T-shirts with the face of their idol printed on them.
President Donald Trump campaigns in Atlanta
Reuters
Rocky, the barber, never imagined receiving a call from someone like Trump, former president and presidential candidate, mogul and television star, in his humble barbershop, which has been open for 17 years and in front of which hangs a large sign saying: speak Spanish”. Rocky doesn’t want to talk about what his vote will be on November 5, but he leaves very clear clues: “It was incredible, it opened my mind, many politicians tell you that they will do something and then they don’t do it, that’s why I wanted to give it to you.” these people the opportunity to come here because in 17 years I have never been so close to someone with power. Yes, the call was impressive, that the president called shows that he cares about small businesses, and people of color.
Protect the stoves
In his call, Trump spoke, as he usually does, in a scattered and somewhat chaotic manner, of his three major proposals for business and racial minorities, who depend heavily on the service sector and have lower wages: prohibiting tips from being subject to taxes, lower the price of a gallon of gasoline below 2 dollars (in California it is close to five dollars and the average is 3.5) and protect gas stoves.
Yes, the stove is one of Trump’s great proposals. Because? In early 2023, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a public agency, began considering possible restrictions on gas stoves due to health concerns about the pollutants these stoves can emit and their relationship to global warming.
There are no immediate plans to ban them, but the stoves have moved to the trumpist political imaginary with other supposed freedoms that the US federal government under Biden wants to restrict as anti-ecological: gasoline cars, pressure showers, air conditioning, incandescent light bulbs…
According to Congressman Donalds, he told the other black men present in the barbershop, “taking away our stoves, to force us to have electric stoves, is going to harm minorities, people who depend on gas because it is cheaper, who sometimes have to cook.” with stoves, that harms us and the Hispanics, they suffocate us for our pockets.
Donalds added that the Republican Party, his own, has become the party of the masses, of the underprivileged, of the common man, as opposed to Democratic elitism. This is not new to many voters gathered here. Brother Stone, which is Philip Ramsey’s nickname, feels very identified with a comparison that Trump made during the phone call. The former president mentioned that something unites him with the black community: prosecutors and judges, supposedly corrupt, want to send him to jail, in the same way that a large number of black men have been imprisoned in their lives in an unjust or exaggerated manner.
It’s a scourge on this community. The percentage of black Americans in the general U.S. population is 13%. By comparison, the percentage of people in prison or jail who are black: 37%.
Brother Stone has spent 20 years of his life in prison, 15 of them in a federal prison and five in the state of Georgia. He was a member of a street gang. Today he has reformed and helps homeless people get off the streets. He disowns the Democratic Party. «The problem we have as a community is that we have no memory, we do not know history. The Democratic Party is the slave party, it is the party that defended slavery, it is the one that came to us as merchandise, and the Republican Party and Trump are the opposite,” he says. “Because? Because what they want is to improve the economy, get us out of poverty, make us more independent, empower us.” Trump already has his vote, no matter what. And he’s going to organize homeless people to vote in November, however they can.
Democrat downfall
In the 2020 US election, approximately 30 million voters were black, representing about 13% of the electorate. Of these, about 87% supported Biden, contributing significantly to his victory. According to a survey conducted by the prestigious Pew Research Center on May 20, the Democratic Party has lost support among black college graduates in recent years, falling from 93% in 2012 to 79% in 2023. While 7% of black voters aged 50 and older lean towards the Republican Party, 17% of black voters under 50 do the same.
For the Trump campaign, it is enough of a loophole to attract more support and overcome that small gap of 12,000 votes from four years ago. For now, the polls smile at him.
