Fact check: Donald Trump fudges history on black vote, drug cost
Facing pivotal November elections, President Donald Trump is misrepresenting the history of African-American voting and exaggerating his influence in boosting income and controlling prescription drug prices. He laments in campaign speeches on behalf of Republican candidates that blacks’ support for Democrats had become “habit,” having voted for them “for 100 years,” and insists his administration’s policies are changing that. In fact, most African-Americans were effectively blocked from the right to vote until 1965. Much of the income gains he claims for blacks and other minorities came during the Obama administration. On drug costs, Trump says he is “bringing them down.” But few drugmakers have actually lowered prices as a result of his pressure. And in remarks at the hot core of the debate over his new Supreme Court justice, Trump distorted the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh‘s accuser in a mocking turn on a rally stage before the Senate elevated the judge to the high court on the weekend. A look at the past week’s claims: BLACK VOTE TRUMP, on black support for Democratic candidates in recent elections: “It’s only habit. It’s habit, because for 100 years, African-Americans have gone with Democrats.” — Kansas rally Saturday. THE FACTS: No, black Americans did not primarily vote Democratic for 100 years, or anywhere close to it. Most African-Americans for much of U.S. history were disenfranchised, then effectively deterred from voting via poll taxes and literacy tests until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting. African-Americans who could vote before then generally backed Republican candidates until the 1932 election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His New Deal programs of economic relief won their support and helped spur a longer-term shift of black voting from Republican to Democratic. The Voting Rights Act eliminated literacy tests, clamped down on poll taxes that the 24th Amendment had banned in federal elections a year earlier and required a number of mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination to get advance federal approval to make changes to their election laws. Before that, only an estimated 23 percent of voting-age blacks were registered nationally, says the Library of Congress , but by 1969 that had jumped to 61 percent. ___ MEDIAN INCOME TRUMP: “How does your African-American, how do you vote for somebody else? I’ve done more for them in two years… And their median income is the highest. But not only for African-Americans, for Asian.” — Minnesota rally Thursday. THE FACTS: He’s wrong about median income now being the highest for African-Americans. He also exaggerates the economic gains he’s accomplished for blacks and Asian-Americans. The median income last year for an African-American household was $40,258, according to the Census Bureau. That’s below a 2000 peak of $42,348 and also statistically no better than 2016, which was Democratic President Barack Obama‘s last year in office. Many economists view the continued economic growth since the middle of 2009, in Obama’s first term, as the primary explanation for recent hiring and income gains. More important, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening and the administration appears to have done little, if anything, to address this problem specifically. As to Asian-Americans, the median income for a typical household last year was $81,331. That’s no better than their median income of $83,182 in 2016. ___ KAVANAUGH TRUMP, as if recounting the questioning of Christine Blasey Ford at her Senate hearing: ‘How did you get there?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Where is the place?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘How many years ago was it?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ‘What neighborhood was it in?’ “I don’t know.’ ‘Where’s the house’ ‘I don’t know.’ Upstairs, downstairs, where was it?’ ‘I don’t know. But I had one beer, that’s the only thing I remember.’ And a man’s life is in tatters. A man’s life is shattered. … They want to destroy people. These are really evil people.” — Mississippi rally Tuesday. THE FACTS: He’s wrong to say Kavanaugh’s accuser could not recall whether the alleged sexual assault happened upstairs or downstairs or any level of detail regarding the likely location. She described in vivid detail being in a locked upstairs bedroom with Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge while others were downstairs at a small house party. Trump also falsely stated that she did not remember how many years ago this happened. She identified the summer of 1982, when she was 15. It’s true she could not identify the house, or remember how she got there or home, but said it was within a “20-minute drive” between her house and a country club in the Bethesda, Maryland, area. Researchers say it is common for people who have experienced a trauma to retain a searing memory of the event but not circumstances surrounding it. ___ DRUG PRICES TRUMP: “You might have seen last month where I called up some of the drug companies. I said, ‘Folks, you just raised up the drug prices. You can’t do that.’ And they all reduced them. Do you believe it? That’s when I said, ‘I’ve a lot of power.’ Pfizer, right? You saw that. Pfizer, Novartis, they raised their drug prices and I’m bringing them down. I said, ‘What are you doing with raising them?’ ‘I’m sorry, Mr. President, we’ll reduce them immediately.’ I said, ‘Man, this is a powerful position.’” — Minnesota rally Thursday. THE FACTS: His account is overstated. His call with Pfizer was at the beginning of July, not last month. It came right after he criticized Pfizer on Twitter for raising prices of about 40 drugs on July 1. Pfizer reversed those increases, meaning prices returned to their June 30 levels, though only until Jan. 1, 2019, at the latest. Novartis was one of several drugmakers that said they wouldn’t raise any prices for the rest of 2018, but they’d already done so on nearly all of their drugs earlier in the year. Few drugmakers actually lowered prices as a
Alabama organizers who secured black vote warn Doug Jones to keep his word
A group of Alabama organizers who played a critical role in securing the black vote for Democrat Doug Jones in the special election earlier this month, penned an open letter to him on Friday congratulating him on his victory and calling on him to fulfill specific commitments to the constituents who put him in office. “The ticker tape for the Jones victory has barely been swept from the floor and we are already seeing him pandering to the right and stepping away from the interests of the people who elected him,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder with Cliff Albright of the Black Voters Matter Fund. “We are here to let Doug Jones know that the voters in Alabama did not turn out in mass numbers for his personal gain,” added Albright. He was elected to represent the needs of his constituents. Organizers worked hard to galvanize the black community, and we have every intention to hold him accountable.” The open letter to Doug Jones was signed by 20 Alabama organizations serving the black community and other people of color. Specifically, the letter calls on Jones to adopt intentional methods to hear directly from his constituents like listening sessions, town halls, and people assemblies. It also points to specific policy objectives such as lifting barriers to voting, ending mass incarceration, fighting tax changes that punish the poor and benefit the rich, establishing a federal living wage, defending the Affordable Care Act, and supporting environmental protections. Read the full letter below: Dear Senator-Elect Doug Jones, Congratulations on your historic victory Tuesday night. We were glad to see, based on your nationally televised comments that evening at your campaign watch party, that you are aware of the significant role that Black voters played in delivering your victory. We appreciate the thanks that you’ve expressed, but we wanted to take a moment to communicate that the best way for you to show your thanks will be through your legislative actions. Like you, we regret that Roy Moore refused to participate in debates during the campaign. Such debates would have provided an opportunity for you to clarify how you would differ from him and the current Republican majority in the Senate. Unfortunately, we are faced with the challenge of holding you accountable without many specifics on which to base that accountability. With that in mind, we request that you begin a process of seeking feedback from the community and outlining a prioritized agenda for the remainder of your term. Such discussions should include feedback on how your congressional office is staffed. This process can include listening sessions, town hall meetings, people’s assemblies or other mechanisms. Given the abbreviated nature of your term, it is critical that this begin sooner rather than later. We are not naïve, and we know that in a traditionally red state which you narrowly won, the temptation will be to shift to the right to attract “moderate” Republican voters. Indeed, your television commercial which spoke of the Civil War and compromise spoke volumes. With that in mind, we’d like to remind you of just a few of the things that Black voters who gave you 96% support have no interest in compromising on. We expect that the Senator from the great state of Alabama, which gave birth to the Voting Rights Act, will advocate for its full restoration and, if anything, it’s further strengthening. The scourge of obstacles such as felony disenfranchisement, Voter ID and other forms of voter suppression are far too common, and we expect you to speak to these issue Speaking of felonies, we expect that you will fight for an end to mass incarceration, and resist current efforts by the Trump administration to revisit a drug war that amounted to a war on the Black community. In a state that has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, we expect you to fight against any tax legislation that benefits the wealthiest individuals in the country while penalizing poor and working-class families. We also expect you to fight for a federal living wage and/or to support local efforts to do the same, such as in the city of Birmingham. We expect you to defend and expand the Affordable Care Act. And while we understand that you do not control Alabama’s utilization of the act and the expansion of Medicaid, we expect you to use your position of influence to ensure that as many Alabamians as possible obtain affordable health insurance. We like that you believe in science and that you understand that clean air and clean water are essential to our quality of life. We expect you to also recognize and address the disparate impact that these issues have on marginalized communities which are often targets of environmental racism. We understand that some of these issues and others were mentioned on your campaign website, and that you have promised to “keep fighting for what’s right – whether it’s popular or not.” We are hopeful that you will indeed stay the course, and we only want this letter to serve as a friendly reminder. Sincerely, Your Constituents Anna Thomas (Jefferson County/Statewide) Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice; Sheila Tyson (Jefferson County/Statewide) Alabama Coalition on Black Civic Participation; Esther Calhoun (Perry County) Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice; Teresa Bettis (Mobile County) Center for Fair Housing, Inc; John Zippert Federation of Southern Cooperatives; Greene County Democrat (Newspaper); Dr. Elaine Harrington NAACP Tuskegee-Macon; Mia Raven (Montgomery County) POWER House; Montgomery Area Reproductive Justice Coalition; Rev. Kenny Glasgow (Houston County/Statewide) The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS); The Prodigal Child Project ; Sheena Billingsley (Mobile) Making a Difference (MAD Activists); Michael Jackson (Houston County) DuBois Institute for Entrepreneurship; Letetia Daniels Jackson (Houston County) Tandeka LLC AL Black Women’s Roundtable Rev. Gregory Bentley SCLC Huntsville Rev. Tyshawn Gardner SCLC Tuscaloosa Ainka Jackson (Dallas County) Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation Roselyn Simmons (Lowndes County) Stand Firm Shun Sheffield (Jefferson County) Fight Back Alabama
Black vote concentrated, but key in Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton matchup
Donald Trump will visit a predominantly black church in Detroit this weekend and, his campaign says, “outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country.” It’s the latest move in the Republican presidential nominee’s outreach to non-whites. The trip comes in response to sharp criticism from many African-Americans incensed by Trump’s sweeping generalizations about black life in America. “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs,” he has argued to black voters. While he usually speaks to mainly white crowds, Detroit itself is 83 percent black. A look at how African-Americans will help determine whether Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected the 45th president: — DEMOCRATIC BLOC In the decades since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 widely enfranchised African-Americans, they have become a reliable Democratic bloc. President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, won at least 95 percent and 93 percent of the black vote in his two victories, sending Republicans to historical lows among African-Americans, according to exit polls. In Detroit, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won barely more than 6,000 votes out of more than 288,000 cast in 2012. Ronald Reagan notched 14 percent of the black vote in 1980, then slipped to 9 percent in 1984. The high mark for GOP nominees since was Bob Dole‘s 12 percent in 1996. Polls this year suggest Trump could fare worse than Obama’s opponents. — STEADY, CONCENTRATED Blacks comprise between 12 and 13 percent of eligible voters (about 226 million), a relatively constant share in recent decades. (Hispanics and Asian-Americans have driven overall non-white population increases.) Until Obama’s historic run, blacks hadn’t matched their population strength at the polls, usually casting 10 or 11 percent of presidential ballots. For Obama’s victories, the African-American share hit 13 percent. Black voters are relatively concentrated in Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern states, but they also represent a significant portion of the populations in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia. — WHY SUCH LOYALTY? Jaime Harrison, South Carolina’s first black Democratic Party chairman, says the party attracted African-Americans when President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and Great Society programs – then cemented long-term loyalty by defending that legacy he says offers blacks “an opportunity for a life closer to the promise of ‘all men are created equal.’” Too many Republicans, Harrison says, answered with “so many dog whistles” intended “to exploit racial divides.” He pointed specifically to Reagan’s quips about “welfare queens” and George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton ad” in the 1988 presidential campaign, which featured a black prisoner released on furlough by Bush’s Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. — TRUMP’S BLACK AMERICA Trump says Clinton is “a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as people worthy of a better future.” Democratic politicians have ruined inner cities, he says. The Rev. Mark Burns, one of Trump’s top African-American backers, recently distributed a cartoon depicting Clinton in blackface. Burns later apologized. “What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump has asked – delivering his pitch to an overwhelmingly white audience. Michael Barnett, an African-American, and chair of Florida’s Palm Beach County GOP, praises Trump for raising uncomfortable questions. “What has Barack Obama really done for black people?” Barnett asks. “At least Donald Trump is addressing these issues.” Still, Trump’s abysmal description of life in black communities falls short. African-Americans as a whole lag other race and ethnicity groups in many economic indicators. Yet, the latest Census Bureau analysis puts median household income for blacks at $35,398; that’s less than the national median ($53,657) and white median ($56,866), but well above the poverty level for a family of four ($24,300). Also, while murder rates have risen in certain U.S. cities, violent crime levels are not at record highs, as Trump has claimed, and FBI statistics show violent crime nationally remains on a two decade decline. That leaves many black leaders and voters accusing Trump of peddling stereotypes. “You don’t go to a 99 percent white audience and talk about us and call that an invitation to us,” Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a Congressional Black Caucus leader, said this week. — CLINTON’S COUNTER Clinton has been forceful in pegging Trump as the bigot in the race, saying in a nationally televised speech that Trump will “make America hate again” and pushing an online ad linking Trump to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Throughout her bid, Clinton has directed specific appeals to African-Americans. She backs stricter gun regulations, emphasizes the need for improving relations between police and the black community and campaigns alongside mothers whose black sons lost their lives in police encounters. Black Democratic primary voters opted nearly 4-to-1 for Clinton over Bernie Sanders in states where exit polling was conducted. (White Democrats narrowly preferred Sanders.) — WHERE IT MATTERS MOST Six battleground states – Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia – have black population shares ranging from about 12 percent to about 22 percent. Obama won each of those states twice, with the exception of North Carolina, which he split. Georgia, a GOP-leaning state that could be competitive, is more than 30 percent African-American. Ohio is a wild card: Obama drove up African-Americans’ share of the electorate there from 11 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2012, with the increase accounting for more than his eventual margin of victory over Romney. Generally speaking, if Clinton is successful in replicating the Obama coalition – her advisers’ clearly-stated priority – it would put tremendous pressure on Trump to run up his numbers among whites to levels no candidate has reached since Reagan’s 1984 landslide. And every additional black vote Clinton picks up pushes Trump’s white-voter mountain even higher. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
