Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina claimed Wednesday that the media and “disinformation” were to blame for President Joe Biden’s lower poll numbers among black voters.
Biden received 70% support from black voters in a May poll released by The New York Times, a significant drop from the 87% he received in the 2020 election, according to CNN’s exit poll. Clyburn told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell that media outlets were not reporting “what’s actually happening” in the country. (RELATED: ‘My Goodness’: CNN Data Guru Breaks Down How Bad Biden Is Doing With Black Voters)
“I ask voters to compare their records, you know, I was born and raised in the gospel, and my father used to preach often — preached from the seventh chapter from the Book of Matthew, that we are informed that we should know them by their deeds, not their words,” Clyburn claimed. “So I don’t care what is said to you, look at what they’re doing. When you have a person running for president, who became angry, at Senator John McCain, because he cast the deciding vote, to allow us to increase health insurance for the people in this country, about 20 million more people with health insurance than had it before, his anger was he wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.”
WATCH:
Jim Clyburn Claims Media Reporting Facts To Blame For Biden’s Black Voter Trouble pic.twitter.com/ALgrk8Ibmz
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 19, 2024
“I asked anybody in this country, black or white, do you think you’re better off without the Affordable Care Act? And that’s what this man says he’s delivered for African-Americans,” Clyburn continued. “I asked them to show me one single substantive thing that he has done that would make black Americans proud to be a part of his effort, not what he’s said because if he can tell you that he is the greatest president for African Americans since Abraham Lincoln that is a bigger lie than he’s told by the January 6 — on January 6, about the elections of 2020.”
Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018, commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson in June 2018 and criticized Biden during the 2020 campaign over the 1994 crime bill provisions that resulted in a life sentence for Johnson. Trump also made federal funding for historically black colleges and universities permanent.
Former NAACP President Cornell William Brooks claimed in a Wednesday CNN appearance that despite Trump’s poll numbers, the “overwhelming majority” of black voters were still backing Biden, who won Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona by a combined total of less than 50,000 votes in 2020.
“So just listen to these people with all these platitudes and listen to his minions out here mouthing off his stuff,” Clyburn said. “We have to be very careful, because this is all about miscommunication, disinformation and that is what caused me great pause, because I know the power of the media, and the power of the media, repeating these things rather than reporting what’s actually happening. That is what’s causing the problem.” (RELATED: ‘I Don’t Believe Them’: Jim Clyburn Tries To Hastily Downplay Polls Showing Black Americans Deserting Biden)
“People feel depressed and if you depress enough people you can suppress their votes and that’s why I’m running around the country,” Clyburn continued. “I’m going to Georgia this weekend to spend two days down there, reminding people of what this man did for the four years that he was in office, and ask him when he comes to you, of this is what you would do for me next year, why didn’t you do it for me the four years that you have it at your control to do so?”
Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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