Black voters flocking to Trump, can no longer ‘afford’ to vote for Biden in 2024, reverend says
Black voters can no longer “afford” to vote for President Biden, one reverend argued, citing his record on the economy and the border crisis as he battles dwindling support in the key voting bloc ahead of November.
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson accused the Democratic Party of abandoning black voters during “Fox News @ Night,” saying more voters who previously would not have considered supporting him are now considering a vote for the 45th president.
“Even if I was black enough, I couldn’t afford to vote for Joe Biden this time, and I hear it is all over, everywhere I go,” Peterson told anchor Trace Gallagher Monday. “For a long time, blacks… were committed to the Democratic Party. That’s no longer the case because the Democrats have clearly tossed blacks to the side, and they’re not looking out for them anymore.”
“They just want the vote, and so black people are starting to feel the economic crisis,” he continued.
One black Biden voter recently told BET that he’s considering voting for former President Trump for the first time due to the state of the economy.
“Right now, I couldn’t tell you that if they opened the polls tomorrow, I’m voting for Joe Biden,” the Georgia barber told CBS News correspondent Nikole Killion.
“The way that these last three or four years have been, this is the worst it’s ever been in my life.”
A New York Times/Siena poll released earlier this month has sparked concern among some liberal pundits worried that Biden is losing black voters – historically a very Democratic voting bloc – to Trump.
According to the new numbers, 23% of black voters support President Trump as of Feb. 2024. That number is a massive increase from where his black support was in Oct. 2020, at 4%.
Peterson blamed Biden’s immigration and economic policies for the pivotal shift.
He argued black communities are mostly impacted by migrant crime as illegal immigrants continue to flood through the porous borders.
“It’s the economy, it’s the borders,” Peterson said. “What is not being talked about [is] a lot of these the aliens are coming in and they are ending up in the black communities… in the schools. The gang violence between the black gangs and Hispanic gangs and other gangs that are coming in is out of control.”
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released in January, Biden’s support among black voters has fallen to just 63%, down from the 92% that Pew Research Center data shows he won in the 2020 presidential election. His support among Hispanic voters is down to 34% from 59%.
Peterson argued that black voters don’t have representation, since politicians are only concerned about their own motives — money and power.
As a result, voters were “wiped out” under Biden’s leadership and cannot afford to vote for him, he argued.
“Even my own family members, I never imagined that they would be voting for Donald Trump. They’re saying yes to Trump now. It started really with Obama. A lot of blacks saw that Obama would do more for them, but he didn’t get jobs. He didn’t provide for them, and under Joe Biden it just wiped them out.
“They cannot afford to vote for Joe Biden anymore,” he concluded.
Fox News’ Gabriel Hays and Taylor Penley contributed to this report.
