Former President Donald Trump claimed in a new interview published Friday that he can’t be racist because he has “so many black friends.”
“I have so many black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know it better than anyone, and fast,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Semafor when asked how he responds to black voters. who call him racist.
“They wouldn’t spend even two minutes with me if they thought I was racist – and I’m not!” he added.
The former president also repeated comments that some Black voters are dealing with him because he is also “discriminated against” by the criminal justice system.
“I think it’s by osmosis. They see what’s happening. And a lot of them feel like similar things have happened to them,” Trump said. “I mean, they said that very clearly and very plainly to me. They see what happened to them.”
In recent months, the former president’s campaign has tried to make inroads with Black voters as enthusiasm for President Joe Biden has waned among key demographic groups.
An April NBC News poll showed Biden leading Trump among Black voters by 71% to 13%, but that’s down from 2020 exit polls, which found an 87% to 12% margin for Biden.
This weekend, Trump will visit a church in Detroit, a city with a predominantly black population. He also recently held a rally in the Bronx in an effort to win over black and Latino voters.
Black men are also among Trump’s potential vice presidential picks, including Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
In fact, a super PAC tied to the Republican senator launched a campaign last week to attract voters of color to the Republican Party.
Trump has often touted how popular he thinks he is with black voters.
During the 2020 presidential race, while in the White House, Trump said he had done more for Black people than anyone, except perhaps President Abraham Lincoln.
“I have said this and I say it openly and not many people dispute it: I have done more for black Americans than anyone except Abraham Lincoln. No one has even been close,” he said at the time.
Trump’s past actions have long been criticized by some black voters, including his call for the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers in the 1989 Central Park Five case.
He was also a major driving force behind the “birther” conspiracies, which fueled false claims that former President Barack Obama, the first black president, was not born in the United States; in 2020, he repeated fringe attacks that Vice President Kamala Harris was ineligible to run because her parents had immigrated to the United States.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
