Many have speculated that Donald Trump is attempting to suppress Black Americans from voting by taking away polling stations from Black communities and slowing down mailing services. While Trump denies those accusations and claims that he’s popular among Black voters, a hot mic captured the president bragging about low Black voter turnout in the 2016 election helping him get elected.
“In a private meeting inside Trump Tower days before his inauguration, Donald Trump told a group of civil rights leaders something most Republicans wouldn’t dare publicly acknowledge: lower turnout among Black voters did, in fact, benefit him in the 2016 presidential election,” Politico reported. “Three-and-a-half years later, those comments take on new weight, as Democrats and Republicans battle over restrictions on voting amid an historic pandemic. Trump has repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that expanding mail-in voting will lead to massive fraud, and Republicans have filed lawsuits against a number of states attempting to do so. Higher voter turnout tends to benefit Democrats — low turnout among Black voters in key states is one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016. And voting rights activists have warned that GOP efforts to limit access to absentee ballots could keep many from voting this fall, particularly Black people, seniors and others at high risk from Covid-19.”
According to the report, Martin Luther King III, William Wachtel, James Forbes, Johnny Mack and Scott Rechler were among those who attended the meeting.
“Many Blacks didn’t go out to vote for Hillary ‘cause they liked me. That was almost as good as getting the vote, you know, and it was great,” Trump said.
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The audio was “surreptitiously recorded” by Wachtel’s then-chief of staff Tootsie Warhol.
You can read the full report HERE.
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