In spite of data showing a drop in violent crime, Donald Trump courted Black voters in Philadelphia on Saturday by pledging to fix a city “ravaged by bloodshed” and urged Christian supporters to vote for him one final time.
Earlier on Saturday, the former president asked Christians to vote for him one last time in November at a gathering hosted by the conservative Christian organization Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington.
“Christians go to church, but they don’t vote that much. You know the power you have if you would vote. You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years you don’t have to vote, OK? In four years don’t vote, I don’t care.”
If elected in November, the Republican presidential candidate told a rally of several thousand at Philadelphia’s Temple University, he would give police “immunity” to do their jobs and “surge” federal resources to cities battling violence.
Trump dismissed as “fake” FBI statistics that showed a continued drop in levels of violent crime and murder across the country in the first three months of 2024, and accused Democratic President Joe Biden of lying about the data.
“Under crooked Joe Biden the City of Brotherly Love is being ravaged by bloodshed and crime,” Trump said in an arena in a historically Black neighborhood, addressing an audience more diverse than a typical rally, but still largely white.
“Under the Trump administration we are going to bring law and order and safety back to our streets.”
Given that Black and Hispanic people make up more than half of the city’s population, the pledge to combat crime was made as part of a bigger outreach.
Some opinion polls suggesting that Trump may be gaining progress with these people this election cycle have provided encouragement to the Trump campaign.
Additionally, Trump painted illegal immigrants as dangerous and burdensome. Without providing any proof, he asserted that they were displacing Black and Hispanic workers from their positions.
“Joe Biden’s open border has also been a disaster for our great African-American and Hispanic-American populations,” Trump said.
Trump has little chance of winning Philadelphia, which Biden won easily in 2020. But he hopes to narrow the margin in the region, key to the tally in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested state because it can swing either to Republicans or Democrats.
Trump, who has falsely claimed that systematic cheating cost him Pennsylvania in 2020, told the crowd, “Philadelphia was one of the most egregious places anywhere” for voter fraud. “We are not going to let it happen again.”
State lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat, said Black voters remember Trump’s history promoting the bigoted conspiracy theory that questioned whether Barack Obama, the first African American president, was born in the United States, and policies he pursued that hurt the Black working class.
“Donald Trump is in a Black place, but Donald Trump does not give a damn about Black people,” Kenyatta said at a briefing at a Biden campaign office in Philadelphia before the rally.
