I want to play something that the former President said last night to Black Conservatives.

Let's play that.

I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. A lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. They actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against. The mug shot, we've all seen the mug shot. You know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It's incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot.

Jake asked James Clibern about that. Also, President Biden had said something recently. He said, Donald Trump has been showing Black Americans his true colors for years. An incompetent anti-Black tyrant who holds us to such low regard that he publicly dined with white nationalists a week after declaring his 2024 candidacy. Come November, no matter how many disingenuous voter engagement events he attends, Black Americans will show Donald Trump. We know exactly who he is. What do you think of the support that he's been getting?

I don't think it's real, and I don't know if anybody else would disagree with me at this table. I do think that there are two different things that could be true at the same time. One is that the Democratic Party has, for a very long period of time, taken Black voters for granted. There is a question right now about the energy that is behind Joe Biden from black voters and supporting him in November. That is true. What's also true and can be said is that Donald is a racist who utilizes racism as a political currency. I can remember going back in studio in 2016 when Jake Tapper was interviewing him about David Duke, and he act like he didn't know who David Duke was on the eve of the Mississippi primary. The fact that he keeps, and even Lindsay Graham said it tonight that Black Americans have a propensity to commit crimes, et cetera, to hypersexualize us, to hypercriminalize us, to keep falling into these tropes. That is the type of racism that plays to the in the face of his party. He says these things to black voters, to their faces, the ones who are ignorant enough to be in that room, not talking to them.

That's what people miss. Donald Trump is not talking to black voters when he goes down these tropes. He's actually talking to white voters and to his base to churn them up and build in a lot of the resentment that we see. A lot of the things that we see that are going on in this country about people who are coming out is because there's some fear that they're being replaced either by black or brown voters. When you see him talking down to black folk in their face, there is a large swath of the American public who says, I like the way that sounds, and that's the currency that he uses. I think two things can be true. The Democratic Party has been laying on their asses for too long when it comes to black voters. That is true. You're seeing that catch up with him. And Donald Trump's a racist.

Far be it for me to explain African-American voting, right? But what explains his rise in popularity? Every poll you see, something Nothing has to account for that, right?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, everything that you just said is correct, which is why the vast majority of black people, male, female, every category, are going to vote against Donald Trump again. Correct. That's the big solid rock. But there is this margin that's beginning to waver and beginning to move, which is what you're talking about. I think that there are some people... Look, when he holds up the sneakers and does that stuff, I mean, Trump, that stuff This is horrifying to anybody with good sense, but where's the motion coming from? I think there's some frustration in the Democratic Party that you're talking about, Bacari, that we've been taken for granted, that some of our issues didn't get taken seriously enough this time around, whether it's voting rights, whether it's police reform, etc. There's some fatigue, and I think you're starting to see that. I think there is this weird nostalgia that is about under Trump, pre-COVID, the economy was better. We got some criminal justice reform, and some of the stimulus support was welcome. What's actually happening, though, is that there is an online influence campaign. Correct. Some of it, I think, is coming from Russia, China, and Iran that is whipping up that conversation way innaturally.

But let me- You ask a question, I'm not answering it. Go ahead. There's a solid block that's not going to move. There is some actual legitimate frustration and fatigue, but there's also, and we have to talk about it more, an online influence campaign designed to depress and distress black voters and to split Black-How about just the immigration?

Let me just put on the screen. Let me just look at poll numbers. Going back to 2008, seeing some shift among Black men siding with the Republican Party. We put that up for McCain, 5%, Romney in 2012, 11%, Donald Trump, 2016, 13%, Donald Trump, 2020, 19%.

Can I put it out there that it says Black male support? One thing we're not acknowledging is the growing gender divide that is happening across the board with partisanship, that men in general are trending more Republican, women in general, especially young women, are trending more Democratic, and that this is affecting. You could probably talk very similarly about Latino men, et cetera. That's one thing. The other thing is we do have a tendency to blow up this particular dialog, which has been around for a very long time. There have always been Black Conservatives, and they've always made a very similar argument, which is that the Democratic Party takes you for granted. I actually don't hear anything all that new in this, but I understand what you're saying about optics, which I think is important to show that I'm out here just saying whatever. I'm not worried about microaggressions or wokeism or any of that stuff. I'm out here telling the truth. There could be lots of reasons why people might want to wear a Trump mugshot shirt. It doesn't necessarily mean... It doesn't mean the Trump curious are not the Trump committed, and that's just something to consider.

Isn't there a chance that the Trump message resonates with African-Americans? Isn't there a chance?

Of course it is. But let's be realistic. But the answer? No, but let's be realistic about what we're talking about. We're not talking about people just straight up waltzing over to Trump. We're talking about people who decide, I don't care enough about this election because I don't think either candidate will materially change my life. That is where the Trump curious becomes more important.

That's the frustration that I have because Joe Biden has done a great deal for people of color in this country. The disconnect is the messaging around the successes that he's had and the fact that they're not actually out there. They're trying to now and they're getting around to that.

I just want to say one quick thing, and I know I just want to get in. One of the great achievements, I think, of progressive black leadership has been to hold the black and brown communities together despite immigration. And that is beginning to erode. In other words, in the '90s, especially in California, there's an attempt to pit black and brown together, saying the immigrants are taking black jobs in particular. And we beat that back. We said, We're not going to let this economic argument put us in the camp. What we think is basically a fundamentally racist attempt to push Brown people down and to create Brown second-class citizens. I think that was a huge achievement. People now take it for granted that Black and Brown people are going to vote together. Because of what's happened, it's very important, because of these Republican governors shipping immigrants into blue cities and they're landing in Black communities in places like New York and other places, Black students are not able to go to schools and use facilities sometimes because this artificially manufactured conflict between Black and Brown folks at the grassroots level. Hold on a second.

It was on ship by Republican governors. Most of them are not transplanted as photo.

We can argue about it. New York Times told me that. But we can argue about it. Well, then. But I think it's important now because the Obama coalition, which you know more about than anybody else, and the Biden coalition, assumed certain groups would stay together. You are seeing some of that beginning to fray. We should be able to talk about it.

Can I say one thing on this quickly? Because when I was with Donald Trump, I remember he engaged in some of this very pandering language. I'd say offensive pandering, he was just playing it too lightly. He called something the platinum plan that was targeting the Black community. That is certainly not why he's seeing some movement with Black voters. I think what we're seeing is far more a reality of this shift of more the working class vote or more of the old demographic going toward. I think it probably has more to do with a their financial situation than it has to do with a right thing.

Working class is Spanish.

But there's also... Can I just... I want to ask a couple of questions. One is, how much of it is just about strength? How much of it is that Trump projects as a Whether he is or not, because I've never heard strong people whine so much about how they're being treated, but whether he's strong or not, I mean, he projects as a strong person. It seems to me-There is research on It's about how people perceive masculinity.

Depending on your responses, it's a pretty good predictor of whether or not you're interested in-Well, may I address your point about these younger black men who are somewhat responding to him.

My other question is, how much Bacari is not just a failure to message properly, but also an inflation of expectations beyond what was actually possible?

I think you're I'm saying both. I think this is an election that we're watching, to answer David's point a little bit, in a social media vacuum. The voices that David is hearing and that Trump hears are the voices of 50 Cent when he's talking about immigrants up here and he's misguided in his statements, or the voices of Killer Mike, or the voices of Meek Mill, which literally have no influence over a larger populace than their Twitter followers or what it may be, but yet still, they are loud. This is more of a function of what the Democratic Party has not done over the past 10, 15, 20 years, then it is a function of the racism or policy of Donald Trump. That's my only point. I think your point about immigration is taken, and it's actually a very sound point. The reason that you have that fraying is because for a very long period of time, Democrats have not actually acted as if the issue of immigration was one of great import. Because we did not take... But it's more than just you talk about Fentanyl, you talk about the border, you talk about the wall, you talk about migrants, you talk about bussing.

But what is also happening is you're starting to see some of those coalitions fray as well, and that is a residual effect.

The fact that there has been this migration or the shipping of or however you want to go. I'm in the city of Chicago. It has torn the Black and Hispanic communities apart.