To Donald Trump, he’s the greatest, and that’s not hyperbole. It’s his claim to have done more for the United States than almost any other president in the nation’s history that drew laughs during his recent appearance before the United Nations General Assembly.
He’s continuing on with the trend established by that remark with a Sunday tweet, claiming that Republicans have the black vote in the bag.
He ranted:
‘So if African-American unemployment is now at the lowest number in history, median income the highest, and you then add all of the other things I have done, how do Democrats, who have done NOTHING for African-Americans but TALK, win the Black Vote? And it will only get better!’
Well actually, the drop in unemployment among black Americans that’s been seen under the Trump presidency is simply the continuation of a much larger trend that began under the leadership of President Barack Obama.
Journalist Daniel Dale presented a chart that summarizes the situation nicely.
Here’s the chart of African-American unemployment, which dropped from 14.1% to 8.2% under Democrat Clinton and from 12.7% to 7.8% under Democrat Obama. It has dropped from 7.8% to 6.3% under Trump. The part to the right of the blue dot is the Trump era. pic.twitter.com/6zZqzILcW4
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 30, 2018
A selection of the data focusing just on comparing Obama’s and Trump’s terms is below. Trump’s presidency, of course, begins around where the chart marks “2017.”
In other words, there’s close to no basis to Trump’s assertion that he’s done far more for black Americans than Democrats could ever dream of.
He’s attracted scrutiny for his approach to black Americans and their voting preferences in the past, asserting that they’ve got nothing to lose by throwing their support behind him — and thereby revealing that he thinks of the black population as mired in agony and of himself as a pseudomessiah.
Still, no matter what scrutiny he faces, he remains undeterred in his efforts to convince everyone that he’s the best — as if this whole spectacle was about him giving himself an ego boost, and that’s it.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
