Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith dissected why Donald Trump grew his support among Black voters, and they believe they found the answer: Trump represented how white people felt about Black people.
The HBO comedian and ESPN star sat down together for Maher’s Club Random podcast, where they analyzed why Black people could vote for a man who repeatedly expressed racist language. Maher offered a suggestion, claiming that while Black voters knew Trump was racist, the language he uses wasn’t foreign to them.
I think Black people think about Trump, like, is he a racist? Yeah,“ Maher said. ”But they think every white person is kind of a racist. Like, and do they think that white people behind closed doors talk like Trump? Yeah.”
Smith enthusiastically agreed with Maher, saying his analysis mirrored how he thought Black people perceived Trump. “That part right there!” he said.
“That second part is very, very important because when you talk about how Trump talks, we’re going like this: ‘So that’s the first time he talked like that, when he became president?” Smith added. “Who the f–k you think he playing with? We know better than that. We know about it. We know that ain’t the first time. And we know that the people that he was friends with all these years, he talked just like that around y’all, y’all ain’t had no problem with it. Don’t act like you have a problem now.”
While Trump did not win the Black vote, he grew his share significantly from 2020. Trump won 16 percent of the Black vote this year, up from 8 percent in 2020, according to the Associated Press. Of Black men, Trump won 25 percent of their votes, up from 12 percent in 2020.
