NBC News’ Dasha Burns told MSNBC on Friday that black and Hispanic voters reject her suggestive statements that former President Donald Trump is racist.
Trump held a rally on Thursday in the Bronx, which is a largely Democratic and Hispanic area, with thousands of Americans reportedly attending. Burns said on “Ana Cabrera Reports” that black and Hispanic voters typically are unmoved when she brings up examples of Trump’s alleged racism because they feel “life was better” under his administration than President Joe Biden’s.
“I talk to these voters about the Central Park five,” Burns said. “I talk to them about some of the comments that he’s made, and the policies beyond rhetoric, right? They are just so focused on what their lives are like right now, what they can feel tangibly that when I push back with those comments, they shut that down.”
WATCH:
Radio host Charlamagne Tha God pointed to three “tangible things” that black Americans may appreciate from Trump’s administration in a recent interview with The New York Times. He said two of Trump’s policies to boost the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and one policy on criminal justice reform may be part of his appeal with black voters.
“They said, ‘listen, he might say some things.’ Again, they focused on the rhetoric still because they feel like that’s what the media sort of consistently puts out there,” Burns added. “They say ‘he might say some stuff that’s offensive, but at the end of the day, I feel like my life was better under former President Trump than under President Biden.’”
“This is what I hear from voters consistently, and we see this reflected in the data as we’re seeing these numbers of black and Hispanic voters sort of getting chipped away from the Democratic Party and moving towards Trump … I see this consistently as I talk to these demographics,” she said.
Trump has decreased the deficit with Biden among black and Hispanic Americans across the six swing states, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll found. Biden is leading Trump 70% to 18% among black voters and 47% to 42% among Hispanic voters, according to the poll.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Friday that Trump’s Bronx rally is a negative indicator for Biden’s reelection chances as it is representative of the shift of Latino voters.
“This is a sign of the Hispanic movement that we saw last cycle, right, where we saw, although Hispanics still favored the Democratic candidate in Joe Biden, they were less likely to favor him than they did Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama both times,” Enten said. “And it’s not just there that happened. We saw it in Hispanic precincts and counties across the country from southeast Florida, southern Texas, even in the Los Angeles area.”