The co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” lamented the “mainstream media” for talking too much about black voters who support former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden has lost a significant percentage of black voters’ support in polls conducted ahead of the 2024 presidential election. No Democratic candidate has garnered less than 80% of the black vote since the civil rights era, The New York Times (NYT) noted, as Biden is falling below that percentage.
“I bet he [Trump] will get about 6 to 8 percent in 2024 and yet the mainstream media talks about this constantly, just like how they used to talk about ‘oh, yeah, well Donald Trump did have the greatest economy,’ no, he didn’t,” Scarborough said. “He was behind [former President] Jimmy Carter in GDP growth. He was behind six other presidents since 1960. It’s just this garbage that’s repeated so much that actually people even in the press pick it up and take it as gospel.”
Panelist Jonathan Lemire complained about Trump allegedly “spinning narratives” that are picked up by the media, particularly with Trump doing better with black voters. (RELATED: ‘I Don’t Dismiss The Issue’: David Axelrod Says Black Voters Are Drifting Away From Biden)
“Yeah the Trump people, and Trump himself, have always been very good about spinning narratives and selling stories that yes, some in the media buy. They’ve been talking about for a while now that Trump would do better with black voters, particularly black men, it didn’t really happen in 2020. They’re making the same case now. We just heard it, because of the indictments, because of the mug shot, Trump advisers have said to me ‘because of the sneakers,’ because Trump gets his name dropped in rap lyrics.”
Trump has been accused of racism for saying black voters like him because they too “have been hurt so badly and discriminated against.”
“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,” Trump said at the Black Conservative Federation (BCF). “And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing, but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.”
New York Times/Sienna College polls from November found that black voters’ support for Biden has dropped from 92% to 71% since 2020. Nearly one-quarter, 22%, of those voters said they would back Trump in the 2024 election.
Another poll conducted by Fox News in October found Biden’s lead among black voters dropping from 92% to 74% since 2020.