Inside the Summit for Trump-Loving Young Black Conservatives

The president has alienated many African Americans—but not these young activists.

By LJ DAWSON @ Politico Magazine, October 06, 2019

As a crowd listened to President Donald Trump speak in the East Room on Friday, chants of “USA” and “four more years” reverberated amid the gold drapes and crystal chandeliers. There were curiously no MAGA hats. But one woman was wearing a “Black AF” pin on her gray suit.

In attendance were some of the hundreds of young black conservatives who came to Washington this past week as a show to liberal America that African Americans can be conservative and support Trump—that the conservative movement is not just for old white men.

“The media narrative is that African Americans don’t support the president,” said R.C. Maxwell, a 31-year-old Republican consultant. “We are happy to demonstrate that there is a larger African-American community that appreciates the job that the president has done.”

These young people, including Maxwell, had traveled to the capital for the second annual Black Leadership Summit, put on by Turning Point USA, a national conservative, often Trump-aligned campus group. More than 400 people from across the country attended, a Turning Point representative said. And the three-day summit featured 17 speakers, including YouTube stars, pastors, a Breitbart News editor—and an address from the president himself. Speakers pushed a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative, and panels touched on conservative values like free markets, gun rights and the Bible. Attendees were encouraged to organize as conservatives and go back to their communities as leaders to help change the norm for black voters.

“This is the herculean effort of the century,” Charlie Kirk, Turning Point‘s 25-year-old founder and executive director, said in an interview. “How can you get black America to think differently ideologically?”

That’s, of course, a tall order. Only 8 percent of black voters identify in some way with the Republican Party, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey. And in a recent AP-NORC poll, only 4 percent of black people said they think Trump’s actions have been good for African Americans. Young people, too—more than two-thirds of them, according to a recent Harvard IOP poll of 18- to 29-year-olds—overwhelmingly disapprove of the president [....]

Here's what he & they are after with this shtick, picking off black males here and there in the right geographic areas:

[....] Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for the RNC, said such events could boost Trump’s 2020 chances even if they only win over a few voters.

“He doesn’t need to make major inroads with minority voters. He just needs a few cul-de-sacs here and there,” he said. “If you can just peel off some voters here and there, then you’re changing maps.”

Touré, a cultural critic and host of podcast “The Touré Show,” said Trump could peel off a few minority male voters based on the personality traits that have been so controversial with the broader public. He said Trump’s allegiance with rapper Kanye West is rooted in their shared egoistic and contrarian personalities, rather than policy.

“There’s an unbridled id to him,” he said. [....]

from Trump courts minority men with mix of policy and personal appeals

by Toulouse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker @ WashingtonPost.com, Feb.27