Rep. Jim Clyburn of Colorado blamed “poor communication” and “misinformation” for President Biden’s struggles with black voters, refuting the notion that the president is losing longtime Democratic supporters.
Recent polls suggest former President Trump could attract up to a fifth of black voters in the November election, a significantly higher share than in past elections.
“This is all about misinformation and disinformation, and that causes me great concern, so we need to be very careful,” Clyburn said in an MSNBC interview with Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday.
“We know the power of the media. They repeat these things instead of reporting what is actually happening, and that’s what creates problems,” he continued.
The veteran congressman and staunch Biden supporter said the problem isn’t with the president, but with public sentiment and perception of the election.
“People are depressed. And if you get enough people depressed, you can suppress their vote,” he continued. “That’s why I’m traveling around the country.”
“I’m going to Georgia this weekend and spending two days there reminding people what this man did during the four years he was in office,” he added.
Both Biden and Trump have stepped up efforts to reach out to Black voters, particularly Black men, in the 2024 election cycle. While Trump has focused on trying to connect with voters, Biden’s campaign has largely focused on policy outcomes.
“We don’t know how to win without Black men,” Mondaire Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told The Hill this week.
The Biden campaign has rejected the idea that Trump is making waves among black voters, with campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu saying this week that “there is no world” in which Trump would win 21% of the black vote, as a recent CNN poll suggested.
Trump won about 12 percent of the Black vote in the 2020 election.
During a campaign rally last month, Biden said Trump was simply “pandering” to black voters, when in fact he was.
“I’ve shown you who I am, who Trump is, and today Donald Trump is spreading and pandering to lies and stereotypes to get your vote, to win not for you, but for himself,” Biden said. “Donald Trump, I want to tell you this: Not in our country, not in our term.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is holding up the polls as evidence that its campaign is making progress.
“President Trump is visiting Black communities and listening to voters where they live,” Janiya Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, told The Hill in a statement this week.
“Opinion polls and every other measure of public support reflect historic numbers of voters in the black community abandoning Biden for President Trump.”
