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Trump Thanks Black Voters For... Not Voting
By
Gaby Del Valle
Published Dec 16, 2016
Modified Dec 16, 2016
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By
Gaby Del Valle
Published Dec 16, 2016
Modified Dec 16, 2016
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At a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Thursday night, President-elect Donald Trump thanked "the African American community"—not for voting for him, but instead for not voting at all.
Trump reminded the crowd of giddy supporters of the closest thing his campaign could muster to black outreach. "Remember the famous line, because I talk about crime, I talk about lack of education, I talk about no jobs—I say, 'What the hell do you have to lose?'" Trump said. "It's true. They're smart, and they picked up on it like you wouldn't believe. And you know what else? They didn't come out to vote for Hillary."
But black voters didn't come out to vote for Trump, either. Despite a dip in black voter turnout, Hillary Clinton won the overwhelming majority of the black vote. In Pennsylvania, where Trump won by a narrow margin—48.58 percent to Clinton's 47.85 percent—Clinton won 92 percent of black voters. Nationwide, 89 percent of black voters chose Clinton, while just 8 percent voted for Trump.
Exactly 38 days have passed since Trump won the election, but between recounts, Russian hacking allegations, and Trump's insistence on going on a "victory tour" of all the states he won, it seems like the election is never going to end—and if you feel like you've heard Trump's macabre thank you to black voters before, it's because you probably have.
Trump dropped the same line at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan just last week. "They came through, big league," Trump said of black voters. "And frankly, if they had any doubt, they didn't vote, and that was almost as good because a lot of people didn't show up, because they felt good about me."
The governments of some of the states where Trump won by the narrowest margins—like Michigan and Wisconsin—have been accused of voter suppression both before and after the election.
The Michigan Democratic Party filed a suit against the Trump campaign alleging that it was actively working to disenfranchise minority voters. In September, a federal court rejected some of Wisconsin's strictest voter ID laws (but left others untouched). In North Carolina, lawmakers were less subtle—the state's GOP bragged about low turnout among black voters.
In Pennsylvania, Trump also thanked "the Hispanic community," which is "great" and "fantastic" and doesn't "want people coming in and taking their jobs." Latino voter turnout was at an all-time-high, but Trump received just 18 percent of the Latino vote to Clinton's 79 percent—a record high.
According to the Washington Post, the 61-point gap between Clinton and Trump is the largest recorded by Latino Decisions. During the 2012 presidential election, Obama received 75 of the Latino vote. Mitt Romney scored just 23 percent of the Latino vote, and some blamed the GOP candidate's lack of Latino support on his subsequent support for "self-deportation." In retrospect, it almost seems quaint.
At this point, it's pretty clear Trump's just rubbing his razor thin electoral victory in our collective faces. (Clinton isn't doing much better.) And for the record, bragging about people not voting or not being able to vote is shameful, but it's long been clear that America's next president has no shame. Do the right thing on Monday, electors.
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donald trump
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