On the verge of his 2020 election campaign, President Donald Trump came to Atlanta on Friday to speak at the launch of a new “Black Voices for Trump” outreach initiative.
President Trump launched the black voters’ coalition in an effort to attract and recruit African-Americans supporters.
“We’re going to campaign for every last African-American vote in 2020,” Trump said.
The President’s speech was held on Friday, November 8, 2019, in a conference room at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. A crowd of 400 to 500 people attended the invitation-only meeting.
During his speech, the president insisted on a set of economic and judiciary gains that his administration has provided to African Americans. He mentioned the record-low unemployment and poverty rate among African Americans, his support for opportunity zones to promote the development of impoverished areas, his investments for historically black colleges, and the passage of bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation last year.
While addressing those claims, President Trump also tried to turn voters against the Democratic Party.
“We’ve done more for African-Americans in three years than the broken Washington establishment has done in more than 30 years,” Trump said.
“The Democrats have let you down,” Trump said.
On the benefits that President Trump claims to provide to African-Americans, 81 percent of African-Americans believe he has made things worse for people of color while just 4 percent say he has made them better, according to A poll by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month.
According to a reporting for The New York Times, although African-American unemployment and poverty dropped at a record low, the decline began under Barack Obama.
The unemployment rate among African-Americans went from a high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 to 7.7 percent in January 2017 when Mr. Obama left the office. The poverty rate decreased from a high of 27.4 percent to 21.8 percent in 2016, according to census data.
Under President Trump, the unemployment rate has continued to fall to 5.4 percent, while the poverty rate fell to 20.7 percent last year.
According to The Associated Press, several anti-Trump protesters marched outside of the Georgia World Congress Center where Trump was speaking.
Vice President Mike Pence also visited Atlanta. Both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. David Perdue and luncheon with his supporters prior to the black voters’ program launch, where the president was expecting to raise about $3.5 million.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/c81e90b3cba745f1a06990d98ec7ebde
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/heads-up-president-trump-is-going-to-be-in-atlanta-today/1006390326
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/politics/trump-black-voters.html
Alma Beauvais is The WOLF's News Director and current junior of Mass Communications at the University of West Georgia.
