Magats_Love_NHB
Let It Burn!
Black MAGA ends 2024 among the year's biggest losers
Despite efforts to curry favor with Trump this year, Black MAGA figures were snubbed or dropped altogether
Black MAGA ends 2024 among the year's biggest losers
Despite efforts to curry favor with Trump this year, Black MAGA figures were snubbed or dropped altogether.
www.salon.com
With all of far-right Republicans' electoral and legislative wins this year — chief among them the election of Donald Trump in November — a subsect of the Make America Great Again camp didn't quite come out on top: Black MAGA.
Black ultraconservative elected officials like Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott frequently joined Trump on the campaign trail, boosting the then-candidate's outreach to the Black electorate as they sat on the shortlist for his vice presidential pick. While Trump successfully picked up a sizeable share of Black male voters as he notched his electoral victory in November, their efforts to curry favor with the would-be president-elect didn't materialize in sought-after Cabinet positions despite the president-elect's promises to reward his most loyal supporters with high-ranking roles in his administration.
After weeks of rolling out Cabinet picks, Trump nominated only one Black person: Scott Turner, a relatively unknown former Texas lawmaker, ex-football player and motivational speaker. Turner, who worked under then-Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson in the first Trump administration, will return to lead HUD, which has had the largest number of Black secretary appointments out of any federal department.
Mix all that with the escalation in scandal — and subsequent snub — of once-Trump-supported North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, and Black MAGA's 2024 political performance has left much to be desired.
Veteran Republican political strategist Leo Smith told Salon in a phone interview that Trump's use of Black interests as a way of gaining and maintaining political power has "come to a head" this election cycle.
"So here we are [with] him having made commodities of both candidates and campaign processes in a way that has benefited him and his reacquisition of the White House," said Smith, the CEO of Atlanta-based political consulting firm Engaged Futures.
Related
Donald Trump and Byron Donalds racial stunts are for white racists, not "outreach" to Black voters
Scott's year began on the heels of his failed presidential bid, following the South Carolina senator's withdrawal from the Republican presidential primary in the final months of 2023. Shortly thereafter, he endorsed Trump and became a vocal supporter of the 78-year-old's campaign.
"I just love you," Scott told Trump during the candidate's January remarks after he won the New Hampshire primary. Trump had quipped that Scott must "really hate" then-GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who appointed Scott to the Senate while serving as South Carolina's governor, to decline to endorse her.
Scott had long been considered a top contender for Trump's vice presidential pick, and his ardent backing of Trump made clear his interest. The South Carolinian even went on to launch a $14 million outreach effort to mobilize voters of color in seven swing states as the Trump campaign ramped up its appeals to Black and Hispanic voters over the summer.
That bid also failed. Trump chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate — and, well, the rest is history.
Smith said that Scott, along with other GOP candidates, has learned to appeal to Trump's interest in the "cult of personality, performative person who raises Trump's profile" and has taken advantage of it.
"They've learned to do that performative presentation quite well, and they learn to have dialog — sometimes thoughtful — in dealing with journalists and public appearances," he said. "But sometimes their dialog is completely gaslighting and raising the performative measure so that they can go viral."
For his part, Scott signaled a lack of interest in assuming a Cabinet position should he be offered one, telling attendees at a Punchbowl News event that he'd prefer to head the Senate Banking Committee should the Senate claim a majority during the election.
"Are these people performing like minstrels?" Or "are these people actually political negotiators who are putting themselves at the table of power at whatever means necessary in order to deliver some results, some critical results, to Black America?"
The Senate's only Black Republican also didn't end the year empty-handed. His Senate colleagues elected him in late November to lead the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Smith notes is a "pretty powerful position" in its own right.
Scott has been supported by not an "exceptional" political talent but an "opportunistic" one, Smith said, and "he's made good use of the opportunity" in passing policy.
In a press conference following his NRSC win, Scott said he aims to help Trump by working to maintain a GOP Senate majority through all four years of the president-elect's term.
"My passion is making sure that we defend our current seats and expand the map and expand our majority so that President Trump does not have two years with a Republican majority in the Senate — that he has four years in control of making sure that America's agenda comes home to each and every household," Scott said.