Former President Trump was in Detroit on Saturday to appeal to black voters, bringing up the issue of President Biden’s authoring of a 1994 criminal justice bill that remains a sore point three decades later.
As part of his campaign announcement to launch the Black Voters Coalition, Trump was the main speaker at a roundtable discussion at 180 predominantly black churches, where he noted rising crime rates were hitting his communities hardest.
“Look, crime is most prevalent here and in African-American communities,” Trump said Saturday in Detroit. “More and more people are looking at me and saying, ‘We want protection. We want the police to protect us. We don’t want to be mugged or robbed or beaten or killed just for crossing the street to buy a loaf of bread.’
Trump used his speech to criticize Biden and the Biden-Harris team, recalling that Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act as a senator in 1994. Biden has since called the bill a “mistake.”
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Former Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Detroit, Saturday, June 15, 2024, as Itasha Dotson and Carlos Chambers listen. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
“Biden talked about ‘super predators’ and wrote the devastating crime bill in 1994. That was Biden. You know, he goes around now talking about the black vote. He’s the king of the ‘super predators,'” Trump said during the event.
Biden authored the Senate version of the bill while a senator from Delaware. The bill, which President Clinton signed into law, has been blamed for contributing to mass incarceration that disproportionately affects black communities.
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Republican presidential nominee and former president Trump was presented with birthday cookies after attending a community roundtable at 180 Church in Detroit on June 15, 2024. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The bill was passed in the wake of the crack cocaine epidemic that plagued black communities in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Biden touted his 1992 crime bill that would “do everything except hang people for crossing the street.”
Biden has authored legislation over the years that was seen as tough on crime at the time but is now controversial and seen as contributing to soaring incarceration rates in the United States.
For example, as crack cocaine consumption soared in the 1980s, Biden co-sponsored another quickly controversial bill, the Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 1986. Signed into law by President Reagan, the act created harsher penalties for possession of crack cocaine than the powdered drug. Although crack cocaine and cocaine have similar chemical makeup, Black Americans use crack cocaine at disproportionate rates compared to white people, leading to outcry that the bill unfairly targeted Black Americans.
President Biden speaks at a campaign event at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center in Philadelphia on April 18, 2024. (Hannah Beyer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Biden has since distanced himself from the 1986 and 1994 bills, saying of the 1986 drug bill that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” The Washington Post reported in 2019. He added ahead of the 2020 election that the 1994 crime bill was a “mistake” because of its impact on Black communities.
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In his comments, Trump suggested that Biden had called criminals from the 1990s “super predators,” when Biden did indeed call criminals from that era “predators.”Insane” but Biden did not use the specific term “super predators.”
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, arrives to participate in a community roundtable at 180 Church in Detroit on June 15, 2024. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Instead, First Lady Hillary Clinton used the phrase in 1996 to speak fondly of the bill her husband signed into law in 1994, and later apologized for using it.
“Just like previous generations, we have been systematically fighting gangs. We need to confront these people,” she said at the time. “They are often connected to larger drug cartels and they’re not just kid gangs anymore. They’re the kind of kids that are often called super predators. They have no conscience, no empathy. We can debate why they got to that point, but we have to bring them into line first.”
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Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at 180 Church in Detroit, Saturday, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
During Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the White House against Trump in 2016, Black Lives Matter activists confronted her about the phrase, and the former secretary of state walked it back.
“In retrospect, I should never have used that word and I wouldn’t use it now,” Clinton told The Washington Post in 2016.
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Trump’s appeal to Detroit’s black voters comes after polls showed him gaining popularity among the electorate. Data analysts seemed surprised when the network told CNN last month that Trump’s support among black voters had more than doubled since 2020, to 22%, while Biden’s had fallen by 12%. Overall, Biden still holds a large lead over Trump among black voters.
President Biden speaks in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Damien Dvarganes)
Biden won Michigan by 3 points in the 2020 election, but a New York Times poll of six battleground states last month found Trump leading in several key states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. The poll, released last month, also found Biden to be more popular in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
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After the roundtable, the Biden-Harris campaign countered that the 45th president’s audience at the church was “noticeably empty and all-white” and that his “last-minute” outreach to black voters “has not fooled anyone.”
Guests pray at the end of a roundtable discussion with community leaders and former presidential candidate Donald Trump at 180 Church in Detroit on June 15, 2024. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“Donald Trump thinks the fact that he has ‘lots of black friends’ justifies a lifetime of disrespect and belittling of black Americans, but black voters know better, and Trump’s last-minute attempts to ‘reach’ black people won’t fool anyone,” Jasmine Harris, director of black media for Biden-Harris 2024, said in a press release.
“Black voters have not forgotten that this man ran for office calling for the deaths of the Central Park Five and entered politics spreading racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. We have not forgotten that black unemployment and uninsurance rates soared while Trump was in the White House. And we have not forgotten that Trump repeatedly cozied up to white supremacists and demonized black communities for political gain – because that’s exactly what he will do if he wins a second term. Black voters are ready to send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020, and to make Donald Trump a loser for a second time in 2024.”
Former President Trump headlines the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat on May 4, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Donald Trump 2024 Election Campaign)
President Trump’s newly formed black coalition, Black Americans for Trump, was launched just days before Juneteenth, which is celebrated annually on June 19 to mark the end of slavery in the United States.
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“It has never been clearer that Joe Biden’s reckless reversal of President Trump’s America First policies is the very reason why, under his administration, Black communities have been devastated by soaring grocery and gas prices, unsustainable housing costs, the influx of illegal immigrants, and rampant violent crime,” Trump senior adviser Lynn Patton said in a campaign press release.
“On his first day in office, Donald Trump will restore all of his proven policies on immigration, law and order, energy and the economy, and he will put Black Americans first.”
Detroit Skyline May 12, 2020 (AP Photo/Paul Sancia, File)
Trump was joined at Saturday’s roundtable by black leaders and advocates, including former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Republican Michigan Rep. John James and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig.
Appearing on “Fox & Friends First” on Friday ahead of the roundtable, 180 Church pastor Lorenzo Sewell praised Trump’s visit as “very meaningful” for the community.
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“Sometimes we forget about the Black vote. Sometimes we forget the power of voting for people in public office. Our voice matters in urban America. That’s why it means so much to us to have a former president come and honor our voice,” Sewell said.
