“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
Whoot, there it is. Convicted criminal Donald Trump has picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate.
After all that talk about former prosecutor, senator, and current Vice President Kamala Harris being a “DEI hire,” 78-year-old Trump picked a 39-year-old opportunistic, freshman senator with only one year of experience to be his running mate.
And after all the clowning and capitulation by Tim Scott, Byron Donalds, Vivek Ramaswamy, Marco Rubio, and Nikki Haley, Trump skipped over all of them and picked yet another white man.
Did you really think he was going to pick a Black guy? Or an Indian. Or a woman?
Donald Trump? The man who spent five and a half years lying about the first Black president’s birth certificate? The guy who was the first president since Richard Nixon to appoint no Black judges to the federal courts of appeals? The guy who tried to throw out millions of Black votes in Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee after he lost the 2020 election? The guy who targeted Black election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss?
As Denzel Washington said in the film “Malcolm X,” “You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled.”
They all knew he was a racist. And they all fell in line with it.
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J.D. Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler” and a “cynical a–hole,” and said that any American would have to be an “idiot” to vote for him. But now that Vance has hypocritically blamed the assassination attempt on Biden, he’s Trump’s running mate.
Tim Scott said that Trump’s moral authority was “compromised” after he announced there were “very fine people on both sides” of the racist Charlottesville march in 2017. But with the prospect of a new job dangling in front of him, this year Scott got engaged and sang a different tune. “I just love you,” he told the twice-impeached former president.
Let’s not forget why Trump had to pick a new running mate in the first place — because he tried to kill the last one.
Marco Rubio called Trump a “con artist.” But this year he was willing to be considered as Trump’s running mate.
Nikki Haley said, “A man that chooses not to disavow the KKK, that is not a part of our party. That’s not who we want as president.” But now she’s moved on and released her delegates.
And let’s not forget why Trump had to pick a new running mate in the first place — because he tried to kill the last one. After inciting a deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021, when Trump learned that his supporters planned to “hang Mike Pence,” Trump said that Pence probably deserved it.
Electing Trump would embolden all the white supremacists, white nationalists, and Nazi sympathizers.
Assassination attempt or not, Donald Trump remains a threat to democracy. He is the same lying, racist, demagogue he was all along. And no matter how many $400 gold sneakers or $60 Bibles he tries to sell, Black people still aren’t buying it.
Don’t be fooled by the handpicked rappers and staged appearances of Black people at this week’s Republican Convention. It’s not just Trump “The Apprentice” celebrity we would be electing.
Electing Trump would embolden all the white supremacists, white nationalists, and Nazi sympathizers. It would usher in an army of right-wing judges, White House staff members, and other political appointees hellbent on dismantling 50 years of reproductive rights law, 70 years of civil rights law, and 100 years of the federal administrative state so they can implement the radical agenda of Project 2025.
A white male Republican trying to shoot another white male Republican doesn’t make Donald Trump any less dangerous as a political figure in America. He has yet to take responsibility for the violent and toxic rhetoric he contributed to make America as divided as it is today.
And now that he has picked his running mate, I’m more determined than ever to stop him — at the ballot box.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
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