Two Black Republicans are doing their damnedest to persuade Black men to vote for Donald Trump in November. U.S. Reps. Wesley Hunt of Texas and Byron Donalds of Florida held their latest “Congress, Cognac and Cigars” event on Wednesday night in suburban Atlanta to explain why President Biden is a wrong choice for Black folks.
Unsurprisingly, the mostly Democratic crowd of about 100 attendees at the cigar lounge pushed back. Many of them are indeed frustrated with Biden and the Democrats, but they recognize that Trump is dangerous for the Black community.
NBC News reports that several attendees repeatedly challenged Trump’s two Black allies on their congressional voting record and positions on issues like immigration and reparations. The second half of the two-hour event, moderated by ESPN’s former ESPN host Sage Steele, grew especially contentious when the floor was opened for questions.
When Hunt and Donalds blasted the Biden administration’s failure to control illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, audience member Alan Hill yelled, “Where’s the Republican bill to fix it?” according to The Washington Post. Folks in the room repeatedly interrupted Donalds’ response.
But a small group of Trump supporters in the audience defended the GOP’s hardline immigration policies. “Why are you so concerned about people that came here illegally getting amnesty? And when a Black man [goes] on the run for 20 years, when they find him, he don’t get no amnesty,” audience member Horace Holden Jr. fired back at Hill.
Toward the end, audience members dogged Donalds for his controversial comments earlier this month suggesting that fewer Black families were fractured during the racist Jim Crow era than typically assumed. Donalds denied praising Jim Crow, saying that his words were misconstrued.
Was the night a failure for the GOP duo? That’s not so clear. It might have been mission accomplished.
Hunt and Donalds have said they do not expect to sway a large portion of Black Democrats but believe they could help Trump swing about 25 percent to his side. “All we want is for you to hear us out,” Hunt told the audience, many of whom told reporters at the event that they were undecided.
Voter surveys indicate that Biden is vulnerable. Nationally, Biden and Trump are tied at 49 percent among registered voters, according to a recently released NPR/PBS Marist National Poll. In our politically divided nation, a few swing states, which can go either way, will likely determine the winner.
At the same time, signs indicate that many Black voters, arguably the Democrats’ most loyal bloc, might not turn out for Biden on Election Day. Alarm bells went off last November when a New York Times/Sienna College poll found that 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states said they would support Trump. That represents a massive swing toward the MAGA nation’s leader, who received just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and s6 percent in 2016.
The Georgia gathering was the second in a series of planned “Congress, Cognac and Cigars” events. Their first one took place in Philadelphia. Hunt said the next event would be in Milwaukee, the site of next month’s Republican National Convention.