Donald Trump took criticism in 2016 for courting black voters while standing in front of white audiences. This go-round, he’s chosen to get up close and personal.
Three weeks ago, thousands attended a Trump campaign rally in the South Bronx, one of New York City’s most diverse and impoverished neighborhoods. On Saturday he spoke at a packed black church in Detroit. No Republican has carried New York since Ronald Reagan in 1984, but Michigan is a swing state that Mr. Trump won in 2016 and lost to Joe Biden in 2020. According to RealClearPolitics, Mr. Trump is currently ahead of Mr. Biden in Michigan by less than a half-point.
Recent polling has shown record levels of black support for Mr. Trump, which Democrats know could make all the difference on Election Day. In a Wall Street Journal survey from April, 30% of black men said they intended to vote for the former president. A New York Times/Siena College poll, also of swing states, put his black support overall at 23%. That’s nearly three times the 8% of blacks nationwide who backed Mr. Trump in 2020.
One reason Democrats are struggling with black voters is that Mr. Trump can run on his economic record and Mr. Biden can’t. Mr. Trump was wise to play up that contrast at the Detroit event. “We achieved the lowest African-American unemployment rate and the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded during my four years,” Mr. Trump said. He added that even if you’re making more money today, you’re still falling behind because of higher costs for gas, food and housing.
The working class did especially well before the pandemic under the Trump administration. Their wages weren’t only rising but rising faster than management’s, and much faster than they had under Barack Obama. Blacks benefited from this more than other groups because they make up a disproportionate share of the working class. Between 2017 and 2019, median household income rose by 10% for whites and 12% for blacks, and pay at the lower end of the wage distribution was rising at almost double the rate of pay at the upper end.
Mr. Trump’s remarks about crime control also resonated. “The fake news doesn’t talk about it, but the black population wants law enforcement more than any other population,” he said. Polls show that he’s right about that, and Democrats aren’t doing themselves any favors by pretending that the cops are a bigger problem than the criminals. But Mr. Trump misfired when he attempted, repeatedly, to paint illegal immigration as the biggest threat to public safety and black upward mobility.
We’ve seen record levels of illegal immigration under President Biden, yet the Justice Department reported last week that crime fell in the first three months of 2024, compared with the same period in 2023. According to the FBI, murder was down by 26.4%, rape decreased by 25.7%, and robbery declined by 17.8%. Overall, violent crime and property crime fell by slightly more than 15%.
Nor is this the first time the country has simultaneously experienced rising levels of illegal border crossings and declining crime rates. Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, the undocumented population roughly doubled, yet over the same period violent-crime rates nationwide fell by a third, and property crimes declined by more than 25%, including in cities with some of the largest illegal-immigrant populations. Someone might remind Mr. Trump that crime spiked during Covid, when illegal immigration plummeted thanks in part to his border policies. None of this means that illegal immigration reduces crime, but it does suggest that the two aren’t connected in the way that Mr. Trump likes to imply.
The former president’s insistence that undocumented immigrants threaten black employment is no more convincing. Illegal immigration fell in 2017, Mr. Trump’s first year in office, but rose significantly in 2018 and 2019. The record-low black unemployment that Mr. Trump rightly brags about occurred at a time in his presidency when illegal immigration was increasing, not decreasing. And while far more migrants have come illegally under Mr. Biden, the black unemployment rate nevertheless reached a new record low last year and has remained low by historical standards.
Mr. Trump was at his best in Detroit when he recounted his economic track record and called out progressive mayors who are diverting limited resources away from struggling black communities to house, feed and educate people who came here unlawfully. He sounded reasonable and empathetic. It was the type of performance that terrifies the political left. Black Americans, like all Americans, understand that we’re a sovereign nation, and that the Biden administration has looked the other way while millions of foreign nationals have lied their way into the country. They also understand that blaming illegal immigrants for social inequality is a dodge. Mr. Trump shouldn’t insult their intelligence. They get enough of that already from Democrats.
