By MATT BROWN (Associated Press)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Golden and scarlet balloons adorned an entrance guarded by the Secret Service that led straight to a bar abuzz with excited reunions, a line of attendees ready to take footage at a photograph wall and a spacious auditorium set to rejoice a novel subset of the conservative motion in downtown Columbia final weekend: Black Republicans.
The Black Conservative Federation’s honors gala convened round 500 largely Black conservative lawmakers, activists, pundits and donors for a proper affair. The temper on the Friday night occasion was buoyed by its visitor of honor, Donald Trump, whose look was a part of an effort to point out the previous president’s affinity with Black voters.
“I’m thrilled to be here tonight with Crooked Joe Biden’s absolute worst nightmare: hundreds of proud, Black, conservative American patriots,” mentioned Trump, who acquired a “Champion of Black America” award on the occasion, to applause from the viewers.
Trump’s freewheeling feedback all through the night time, at instances acquired with enthusiastic applause and raucous laughter, had been roundly condemned by Democrats and Black group leaders. Black media ridiculed and lampooned the occasion in actual time throughout its broadcast. The divergent reactions to Trump’s remarks highlighted the usually lonely efforts of Black GOP activists and the uphill battle Republicans have in making severe inroads with Black voters, who nonetheless maintain extremely damaging views of the GOP, in keeping with current Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling.
“Black Americans are waking up to the reality that the Democratic Party has taken advantage of them, and the media and the party are terrified,” Black Conservative Federation President Diante Johnson mentioned in a press release on Monday, responding to backlash over Trump’s speech.
“No amount of media deception or liberal race-baiting will sway the minds of Black voters who will cast their ballots this November for safer streets, a better financial well-being, a secure border, and a complete rejection of Joe Biden’s disastrous tenure,” Johnson mentioned.
Normally held in Washington, D.C., the gala was relocated this yr to Columbia, S.C. on the eve of the GOP Republican major, the place Trump handily dispatched the state’s former governor, Nikki Haley. It was a significant shift in venue. At a time when Republicans have signaled better curiosity in making inroads with communities of shade, the dinner served as a chance to spotlight the GOP’s pitch to Black voters.
But for its attendees, who paid between $100 and $500 for a seat on the closed-door occasion, the gala additionally served as a homecoming for a section of Black GOP voters who reject recommendations that the get together and its leaders are racists. The occasion featured a litany of speeches and prayers by high-profile Black Republicans, with musical performances by a jazz band that coated tunes by John Legend.
“It’s grown tremendously since the beginning,” mentioned Melanie Collette, a gala attendee and Republican county commissioner in Cape May, N.J.
Trump, she mentioned, didn’t “take the traditional Republican attitude, which is, ‘We’re not going to get their votes anyway so let’s not even bother.’”
“The numbers are picking up (with Black men). And I just hope and pray that a lot more female Blacks will come to the light and come to the truth,” mentioned Alvin Portee Jr., a Columbia resident who attended the gala in a go well with and prime hat bearing Abraham Lincoln’s face.
“I would say that the first Civil War was about Black people, and this is our civil war now,” he mentioned.
In a winding speech, Trump claimed “the Black people like me” due to his quite a few felony indictments and mug shot taken as a part of the continuing election interference case in Georgia. Black folks can relate to being criminalized like him, Trump mentioned, due to systemic discrimination within the courts.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to as Trump’s comparability of his authorized woes to systemic racism within the felony justice system “self-serving.”
“It is repugnant and divisive to traffic in racist stereotypes that have the effect of tearing all Americans down,” she mentioned throughout a press gaggle on Air Force One. “It is profane to compare the long, painful history of abuse and discrimination suffered by Black Americans to something totally different.”
Haley, Trump’s final standing presidential major rival, referred to as the gala speech “disgusting,” whereas President Joe Biden’s reelection marketing campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond mentioned the feedback had been “insulting,” “moronic” and “plainly racist.”
And civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton referred to as Trump’s feedback “an epitome of an insult to Black folks” and criticized the night time’s attendees. “If any Black Republicans had any dignity they would denounce this characterization of Black folks by Donald Trump,” Sharpton mentioned Saturday from New York.
“Don’t try and act like that is who we are,” he mentioned. “That is who we were beat down to be. And Trump knows because he did that to five innocent black young men in this city,” he mentioned, referencing Trump’s characterization of the now exonerated group of Black and Latino teenagers on the heart of one in every of New York City’s most infamous and racially fraught controversies within the Nineteen Eighties.
Yet continuously all through his 90-minute look, the gala viewers praised and reveled within the former president’s handle. Black Republican leaders additionally acquired applause for criticizing Democratic insurance policies on range and inclusion, economics, immigration and training.
“Here I stand before you being judged literally not by the color of my skin but the content of my character,” mentioned Rep. Wesley Hunt, referencing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most well-known speech. “Some people believe otherwise and think that people like us in this room don’t exist. So it’s up to us to tell the truth about what it is that we’re doing.”
The night time’s excessive vitality and impassioned rhetoric largely sidestepped the challenges going through Republicans in making their objectives with Black Americans a actuality. Black voters usually again Democrats by margins round 90%, the next charge than some other racial demographic. However, Black enthusiasm for President Joe Biden has slipped barely over the previous yr.
Only 42% of Black adults mentioned they approve of Biden in a January AP-NORC ballot. That’s down from the 56% of Black adults who had a good view of Biden in December. Only 25% of Black adults had a good opinion of Trump in December.
Many attendees had been optimistic that they might lastly be gaining better consideration and affect in each realms.
Vivian Childs, a GOP activist and enterprise proprietor who traveled to the occasion from Warner Robins, Georgia, mentioned she took no situation with Trump’s generally clumsy makes an attempt to attraction to Black voters. She chuckled when requested concerning the former president selling his customized metallic gold and pink footwear at Sneaker Con, which some surrogates identified as an attraction to Black voters.
“Look how many people he gets to listen. When he does those things, he’s bringing in another group of people that may not have paid him attention. Now he has their attention,” mentioned Childs. “You have to reach the student where they are. And he’s reaching people right where they are.”
AP author Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
Matt Brown is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity crew. Follow him on social media.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”