When former President Donald Trump shows up at Temple University for a rally Saturday, the Democratic National Committee will have a message for him — and the party is doing its best to make sure he sees it, too, with a billboard, a mobile billboard and kiosks in buildings around the campus where the rally will take place.
“Donald Trump is coming to North Philly, but he can’t fool us,” the mobile billboard reads. “He’s a disaster for Black Americans.”
The kiosks, taking aim at Trump’s relationship with the Black community and young voters, highlight President Biden’s student loan forgiveness efforts. They’ll be placed in buildings across the campus, and there will be a billboard saying, “If Trump wins, Black families lose” along I-95.
Here’s one of the DNC graphics:
The effort comes a couple of days after Juneteenth, the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery, and follows recent reports that Trump called Milwaulkee, where the Republican National Convention will be held this year, a “horrible city” during a meeting with House Republicans.
Vice President Kamala Harris talked about the Milwaukee comment in an interview with radio host Sherwin Hughes on Thursday.
“You look at what Donald Trump did to… criticize Milwaukee. He did that with my home city of Oakland,” Harris said. “He did that as it relates to Baltimore, as it relates to Atlanta and Philadelphia. And, I will let your listeners connect the dots in terms of what all those cities have in common. There seems to be a pattern at play,” she said, alluding to the fact those cities all have large Black populations.
In 2017, Mr. Trump said Atlanta was “falling apart” and “crime-infested.” During his presidency, he called Baltimore “rat and rodent-infested.” And while casting doubt on the 2020 election, Trump called Philadelphia, the site of Saturday’s rally, one of “the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country.”
In response to Harris, Janiyah Thomas, Team Trump’s Black media director, said, “President Trump was referring to how Democrat policies are failing these blue cities. If you ask the average voter in these cities, they will say that Joe Biden and the Democrats have abandoned their communities and they are desperate for change.”
Thomas added that the Trump campaign is doing outreach to minority voters while Mr. Biden’s campaign is gaslighting Black voters.
Black voters were a key demographic that helped Mr. Biden win in 2020, and they were pivotal in his pursuit of the Democratic nomination. Despite that, there have been indications that his support is faltering within the Black community.
A recent CBS News poll shows that 57% of Black voters feel things would be better for them if Biden is reelected, compared to 69% of Black voters who felt the same sentiment should Trump win. Still, 81% of Black voters said that they would support Mr. Biden over Trump.
In an effort to make inroads with the Black community, Trump held a roundtable with community leaders at a church in Detroit on Saturday. At the event, Trump said Mr. Biden has been the “worst president for Black people.”
In a statement, DNC spokesperson Abhi Rahman reiterated that Trump was “a disaster for minority communities — particularly Black Americans.”
“He says he’s not racist, but his record says differently. Over and over again, he has insulted predominantly Black cities, and during his time in office, jobs disappeared, unemployment more than doubled for Black Americans during the pandemic, and his tax scam widened the racial wealth gap,” Rahman said.
Rahman also argued Black wealth hit a record low under Trump, while small, Black-owned businesses started at a higher rate under the Biden administration.