Debunking Charlie Kirk on Trump and black support

In early August 2018 Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, tweeted more attempts to claim President Trump has growing support from blacks or African-Americans.

First, I want to fact-check these numbers and then I want look at how and why Kirk continues to try to give credence to black support for Trump. There are, in fact, black people who support Trump. This is not news.

But I will argue that Kirk takes what many consider to be “spin” and puts it on steroids in such a way as to not just dispute one facet of how we understand a subject but to turn an entire narrative on its head.

In this case of black support for Trump, Kirk is up against a strong sentiment in the black population of the US against Trump. This sentiment is forged by Trump’s history of support or at least affinity for white nationalism during the campaign, his professional history of racial bias, and of course, his presidency. See here, here, and here for more on those points. And my god, the tweets.

The polls

The NAACP poll is real. It was conducted by polling more than 2,000 voters in more than 60 of the nation’s most competitive midterm races as labeled by three political polling groups.

As you can see, the 21 percent support by blacks for Trump is accurate.

But also as you can see the support from blacks is the least support from any racial/ethnic group. And the survey notes in its own headline: “Trump’s approval numbers are underwater for all voters of color, and for no racial/ethnic group of voters surveyed does he have majority approval.”

Along side that 21 percent is this: the survey “found 82 percent of black voters felt disrespected by something Trump said or did, while 50 percent of white voters felt that way.”

Kirk on Mitt Romney’s numbers seems to get it wrong. Some polling in 2012 did have Romney at 6 percent support of blacks, but I can’t find evidence this NAACP poll showed that. Romney did get 6 percent of the black vote in 2012. Bush received 11 percent in 2004. Trump received 8 percent in 2016.

Other, earlier polls show less support for Trump of blacks than the NAACP’s 21 percent. According to CNN, “a Pew Research Center survey from late April also shows Trump’s approval rating [by blacks] at 13%. And a Quinnipiac University poll from a few days earlier in April showed 14% approval.”

Outside the 21 percent number, the NAACP poll is bad news for Trump: “Voters across all racial and ethnic groups believe Trump is setting race relations back. Three quarters of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans believe Trump is setting race relations back while a small majority of white voters believe so. Black women (89%), in particular, feel disrespected by President Trump.”

The Rasmussen poll is also real, but it is “consistently friendlier to Trump.”

Trump on Trump’s Black Support

On the topic of black support for Trump, Trump had misleadingly claimed Kanye West’s support helped double black support of Trump. Kirk made a more specific claim.

According to The Washington Post, “Trump was referring to an article from a conservative publication that looked only at black male support in a poll from Reuters-Ipsos. That poll had a small enough sample of black men that the pollsters pointed out to CNN that Trump’s approval might actually have dropped during that period.”

The Post also charted Trump’s support by blacks over time:

The NAACP poll notes though that “black celebrities like Kanye West or Dennis Rodman who support Trump do not help Trump’s support among African American voters. To the contrary, more than three times as many black voters say that black celebrities speaking on Trump’s behalf makes them less interested in listening to or supporting Trump’s ideas than black voters who say it would make them more open to listening to or supporting Trump’s ideas. A majority of black voters say these celebrities have no impact.”

Why and How

The question remains how and why Kirk props up black support for Trump. He is aiming, as I mentioned above, to re-frame a deep identification against Trump.

Kirk has tried a few ways to do this. First, Kirk has argued Trump has been better for blacks than Obama.

[Others — specifically a black pastor — has made this claim, too.]

Kirk has cited at least one fact in another tweet which he uses as evidence for this claim. I will get to that later. But while the rhetorical opposition (18 months to 8 years) has a nice ring to it, this tweet is evidence-less opinion.

And with no facts to back it up, I can ignore it in this situation. It does show the “spin on steroids” method if one sees the comparison in that manner: one man in 18 months did more than another man in 8 years. That is some super pro-black actions. And the talking point that Trump is the “most pro-black” president ever is another sign of this spin on steroids.

Kirk is certainly trying to counteract the truth, as seen in a February poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, that the overwhelming majority (75–80%) of blacks think Trump is racist:

Kirk is also trying to chip away at the overwhelming support blacks give to the Democratic Party. According to results, Clinton earned 88% of their vote, compared to Obama’s 93% in 2012.

So that 21 percent of blacks who support Trump may be high compared to the 2016 election. But Kirk’s 15 percent of the black vote in 2018 that he hopes the GOP can “snag” and so give the Democrats “no chance” is about what the number was in 2016.

Plus black voter turnout fell in 2016 compared to previous years and if anything, the NAACP poll shows high voter energy in blacks.

A second way Kirk has tried to change the narrative from black animus of Trump to black support is his tweets of history “lessons” that show how the Democratic party is — at least once was — racist.

While these tweets have facts in them, the larger context of the party switch especially in the South during the Civil Rights Period just obliterates any attempt at the kind of history “lesson” Kirk intends. Historian Kevin Kruse, who has fact-checked some of Kirk’s historical tweets, has provided a list of his facts debunking such history here.

Trump, Obama, and Clinton

Kirk’s main rhetorical move has been comparing Obama to Trump. In this last tweet he adds Clinton.

As a historical note, Clinton and Obama enjoyed deep, deep black support. To try to attempt to turn that history on its head is Kirk’s audacious claim.

Clinton and Black Imprisonment

First, this is not an issue that has died off. Clinton was confronted on this during his wife’s campaign in 2016 by the Black Lives Movement.

The key element of this criticism is the 1994 crime bill, which Clinton pushed and signed. According to The New York Times, “for some critics, the 1994 crime bill has come to epitomize the late-20th-century policies that sent incarceration to record levels and ravaged poor communities, taking a particularly devastating toll on African-Americans that political leaders are only now working to reverse.”

But The Marshall Project argues that “suggestions that the 1994 bill was the key driver of mass incarceration” are not correct. That is because, according to the Times, “the data shows, the startling rise in imprisonment was already well underway by 1994, with roots in a federal government war on drugs that was embraced by Democratic and Republican leaders alike.”

But of course with the crime bill’s “three strikes” and “truth in sentencing” many blacks — especially black men — were sent to prison under sentences that many today see as too harsh.

So what about Kirk’s claim that Clinton oversaw “record black imprisonment?”

On the whole, this claim is false.

According to Bureau of Justice stats, the year 2000 is the top year for black imprisonment. But as the chart notes, this is for state prisons only.

And it doesn’t matter that Kirk didn’t specify state prisons because as president, Clinton had no control over state prisons. Though of course federal law often pushes state law.

Federal prison numbers offer a different line:

Blacks in federal prisons certainly didn’t slow in Clinton’s time, but the rate keep going up after him.

The full picture of Clinton and imprisonment is more complex. According to sociologist Pam Oliver, “to be sure, Clinton continued the mass incarceration policies and Black people continued to be locked up for drug charges at rates much higher than Whites, but it cannot be correctly said that Clinton’s policies were the initial or main cause of Black incarceration, even as it can correctly be said that his policies continued mass incarceration and spread it to other groups. The rise in mass incarceration in the Clinton era happened outside the big cities and had greater impact in smaller cities and rural areas, where White people live.”

The chart also points out the high point for state imprisonment of blacks at 2000, though the federal line keep rising. Why black incarceration started down in 2000 is a mystery, though the Marshall Project explores four reasons that might explain it.

Kirk’s Clinton line is deeply misleading and discounts much about his presidency.

Obama and Welfare

According to the Huffington Post, of 43 million food stamp recipients in 2016, 36.2 percent were white, 25.6 percent black, 17.2 percent Hispanic and 15.5 percent unknown. And of the 2.7 million who received that same year what is most commonly called “welfare,” 36.9 percent were Hispanic, 27.6 percent white, and 29.1 percent black.

Beyond those numbers, I cannot find a specific citation for a record number of blacks on either of these two types of assistance. If someone finds one, I’d be happy to add a link.

Kirk’s claim may be an implication based off the fact that a record of number of Americans enrolled in food stamps under Obama. See the CNN chart based on USDA data.

So Kirk surmises that if all went up, so did blacks. Kirk’s implication is of course Obama having a record number of blacks on these government assistance program is not only bad ideologically, but shows his less-than-successful presidency in helping blacks, compared to the Trump line next.

The two — unemployment sand government assistance — are clearly connected, as the downtrend in people on assistance also happened during Obama’s presidency as the economy improved.

Kirk’s line on Obama is possibly true, but he didn’t give any evidence for it. And it is certainly fails to indict Obama in comparison to the Trump line.

Trump and Black Unemployment

This claim is an old canard for Kirk. I count at least four tweets in 2018 where Kirk has mentioned this.

Yes, black unemployment is at a record low. “It’s the lowest number ever recorded since BLS began breaking down the numbers by race in the 1970s,” according to Vox.

But it has been declining for many years. As The Washington Post points out, “black unemployment fell fairly consistently from 2010 on, as did the rates for whites and Hispanics.”

And the Post points out Trump has not been an accurate narrator of black unemployment since the campaign. “Then… he tried to claim that the situation for black Americans, particularly young black Americans, was dire. How’d he justify that… ? By creating his own metric of unemployment, focusing on young people because he included students in his totals of those not working. So yes, unemployment among black teenagers was high — because many of them were for some reason going to high school instead of punching a clock. It was a nonsense claim meant to make the situation look bad — but now that he’s president Trump embraces a metric under which Barack Obama’s presidency looks pretty strong.”

In short, “Trump misrepresented the facts to voters in 2016 and now wants credit for a trend he inherited. Oh, and while implying that the trend never happened under the Democrats, which it did — twice.”

Kirk’s line on Trump is missing much-needed context.

In the end Kirk’s simple comparison of three people on the subject of effects on black Americans is more than misleading. It disregards historical trends and facts that promote a wider view of the data than one person’s presidency.