In my new book, God, Trump and the 2020 Election, I devote an entire chapter to the relationship between Donald Trump and African Americans. I know, of course, from history that most Blacks in America were Republican for several generations after the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. Then something happened that moved most of them to vote Democrat, even though it was the Democrats who supported slavery, fought the Civil War and opposed rights for Blacks after they were freed. It seems to me that Democrats, the ones who founded the Ku Klux Klan to oppress blacks, often get a free pass from the Black community.
On my podcast today, I interviewed Bishop Kevin Williams, the pastor of New Jerusalem Cathedral in Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as Monument of Praise in High Point, North Carolina. He is passionate about getting the truth to the African American community that in spite of all the rhetoric, Democrats do not have the best interest of the Black community at heart. He told me that Barack Obama, the first Black president, actually did more for the LGBTQ community than he did for the Black community.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is often misunderstood by the Black community. They have been told that he is a bad person, but he has done many things to help them, starting with the booming economy, which has cut the unemployment rate to the lowest since records were kept in the 1960s. He has also enacted prison reforms that have been talked about for decades but not passed until the Trump era.
Bishop Williams believes that Donald Trump and the Republicans have a messaging problem, and that there needs to be third-party endorsements of what Donald Trump and his administration, including people such as Dr. Ben Carson with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, are actually accomplishing. He told me that when Black Americans hear the truth, often their eyes are open and they say they did not know before. He is passionate to get out this message, especially as we are only 90 days away from the election.
In the Black community the so-called “Black church” is a very strong influence—more so than most denominations are in the majority community. I’ve spent my career covering the Black Christian community in Charisma because it makes up a sizable percentage of the Pentecostal movement. Indeed, Pentecostalism grew out of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival, which was led by a Black preacher named William Seymour.
I believe these Black Christians—who usually, as I mentioned, support the Democratic Party—are beginning to look at Trump differently.
However, I’ve had Black preacher friends say they overlook the bad policies of the Democrats (such as those regarding abortion and gay marriage) in the same way white Christians overlook the many faults of the Republican Party just because the Republicans back certain “Christian” causes.
In God, Trump and the 2020 Election I tell the story of Candace Owens, a well-known conservative activist who began the movement called Blexit in 2018. The campaign, which promotes the exit of Black Americans from the Democratic Party, is now a nationwide movement. Owens and others are working to stop the narrative that Trump is racist, one she says is propagated by the left-leaning media.
Owens has defended Trump against accusations of racism from Black leftists, saying, “Black support for Donald Trump has doubled since this time last year. You guys can try to pretend that he is pushing in a racist era in this country when in fact we know the Democrats are the racists. [They] have always been the racists; the parties never switched, and you should know this. . . . You know the people under the hood of the KKK were Democrats, and the parties never switched. And it’s a shame you should defend. … our community being attacked because we support Donald Trump because we understand that we have better economic opportunities under him than we ever had [with] Obama. . . . I’m really done with this. I’m done with this racist narrative.”
But calling Trump a racist is nothing new. Democrats have been using the epithet to label any Republican they don’t like. The article on RealClear Politics about Black voter support for Trump said, “This condemnation … has become something of a litmus test in the Democratic primary, with candidates lining up one after the other to decry the current occupant of the Oval Office.”
Yet the perception remains in the Black community and media that if you’re Black, you must be a Democrat. Not only that, but the media also vilifies every Black person who is Republican or supports President Trump. In my book Trump Aftershock, I devoted an entire chapter to “Billionaire Radicals,” documenting how many believe Democrat super-donor George Soros (and others) helped fuel the fire of division. He often invests heavily in the organization and logistics of what are meant to appear as grassroots efforts that subsequently materialize as protests, rallies and marches.
These are not organic in nature but are methodically coordinated operations intended to help stoke the flames of racial and ideological division. The liberal media often highlights these stories and then further amplifies them to increase their effectiveness. Soros seems to be a firm believer in the extreme-Left doctrine found in Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals.
The good news is most Black Americans who back the president are not turning their backs on him, because they see what he’s accomplishing and what he’s doing for the Black community—even with all the new economic problems associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The president wants to reach the Black community, and I hope the people will begin to see that—especially during the time of rebuilding.
Black America needs a strong leader such as Donald Trump as we move to recovery, just as all of America does. I make this point clear in God, Trump and the 2020 Election because the issues of leadership and the direction of our nation were important before the outbreak of COVID-19, and they’re even more important now.
This article has been adapted from Chapter 4 of God, Trump and COVID-19, published by FrontLine, an imprint of Charisma House. To read a free sample from this book, click here.
As always, I hope you’ll visit stevestrangbooks.com where you can purchase all four of my books that are so crucial to an understanding of the spiritual side of Donald Trump and his impact on our nation.
I encourage you to listen to my podcast with Bishop Williams which is one of the most interesting that I’ve ever done, as well as a previous podcast from Feb. 25, 2020, called What Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln Have in Common as Presidents on the Charisma Podcast Network.
Help us get out the word by sharing this article and podcast far and wide. As the truth becomes known, I believe that attitudes will change. This is especially important if Donald Trump is to win a second term. {eoa}
