Donald Trump is not racist, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith says as he insists ‘brothers found him to be cool’
Donald Trump is not a racist, or at least not in the eyes of black men, says ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.
Speaking with comedian Bill Maher on his show: Club randomThe increasingly political Smith rejected the accusations of racism that Trump has faced since the early 1970s.
“If we’re being completely honest, all the brothers thought he was cool,” said Smith, who has been highly critical of the Democrats since their election defeat.
‘They thought he was very cool. So let’s be clear. Because he knew his sport, okay? He said what he felt, he stood against the establishment, which we love, and we were drawn to that.”
Maher agreed.
“I don’t think his motivation is, ‘I don’t like black people,’” Maher said. “I think his motivation is, ‘Everyone has to love me.’
Donald Trump is not a racist, at least not in the eyes of black men, says Stephen A. Smith
Smith jumped to Trump’s defense following his victory in the presidential election this month
Smith claimed he knew Trump from before his days as a politician and then denied ever calling the 78-year-old racist.
“I’ve never talked about him like that before,” Smith said. ‘Ever. Not once. Not once. Because I knew him beforehand.’
Trump managed to make a small breakthrough nationally among black voters, who made up about 1 in 10 voters nationwide.
Nationally, about 8 in 10 black voters supported Harris. But that was down from about 9 in 10 in the last presidential election that chose Joe Biden.
Trump has roughly doubled his share of young black men — helping him become the key Democratic voting group. About three in 10 black men under 45 voted for Trump, about double the number he got in 2020.
Accusations of racism against Trump did not arise during his first foray into politics eight years ago.
In 1973, for example, the Justice Department sued the real estate magnate and his father for their alleged refusal to rent apartments in predominantly white buildings to black tenants. Testimony showed that applications submitted by black apartment seekers were marked with a “C” for “colored.”
The lawsuit ended in a settlement in which the Trumps acknowledged their “failure and negligence” to comply with the Fair Housing Act, although they never had to explicitly acknowledge that discrimination occurred.
Trump, seen alongside billionaire donor Elon Musk, has faced accusations of racism since the 1970s
In 1989, Trump infamously took out full-page newspaper ads calling on New York state to reinstate the death penalty while five black and Latino teenagers were set to stand trial for beating and raping a white woman in Central Park.
Black clergy leaders responded with their own full-page ad denouncing Trump’s as a “thinly veiled racist polemic” designed to divide the city. The Rev. Al Sharpton also organized a rally outside Trump Tower.
The five men were eventually acquitted in 2002 after another man committed the crime and determined that their confessions had been coerced.
In the 1990s, the Atlantic City casino magnate regularly cast doubt on the legitimacy of tribes seeking to build casinos in the New York area, citing their dark skin as evidence that they were falsifying their ancestry.
“To me they don’t look like Indians, and to Indians they don’t look like Indians, and a lot of people laugh about it,” Trump said of the Mashantucket Pequots who operate the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut during testimony before Congress . in 1993.
Tribal leaders at the time called the comments racist. The National Indian Gaming Association filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission after Trump made similar comments on Don Imus’ talk show.
The group described his on-air comments as “obscene, indecent and profane racial slurs against Native Americans and African Americans.” The FCC declined to take action, though it called the comments “deplorable” and “offensive.”
Trump chose a prominent African-American candidate for his second term in the role of ex-NFL player Scott Turner (right), who will become head of Housing and Urban Development
The Republican businessman also famously used the “birther” conspiracy to thrust himself into national politics in the late 2000s.
During the Obama administration, he baselessly claimed that the country’s first black president was not qualified to hold office because he was born in Kenya and not in the US, as required by the Constitution.
However, he recanted the statements during his winning 2016 campaign.
Trump’s cabinets were largely devoid of African Americans, with the notable exception of his nominees for Housing and Urban Development: Ben Carson, from 2017 through 2020, and his current pick, former NFL player Scott Turner.