Black men are poised to take Trump to the White House. Biden insiders are worried

In February, on the eve of the South Carolina primary, former president Donald Trump spoke before the Black Conservative Federation in the Palmetto State’s capital city of Columbia. There, he tried to link his own legal battles with the plight of Black men who have been unfairly discriminated against in the US.

“I got indicted a second time, and a third time, and a fourth time,” he told the audience. “And lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me — because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against and they actually view me as I’m being discriminated against.”

The twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former president’s remarks were equal parts clumsy and revealing: Trump has long seen an opening to improve his standing with African American voters, especially Black men. It’s why, despite his often harsh rhetoric about “law and order,” he signed on to bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system during his presidency.

Although he and his advisers boasted during his 2020 reelection bid that upwards of one fifth of Black men would vote for him, Trump lost Black voters to Joe Biden by significant margins when Americans went to the polls four years ago. YetBiden has struggled to keep that key demographic in the fold during his time in the White House.

In his victory speech in November 2020, Biden specifically thanked Black voters and pledged “you’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” He had largely won the Democratic nomination thanks to support from Black voters in states below the Mason-Dixon line, after all. But in the years since, his presidency has not been able to deliver on many of the major pledges he promised, namely in police reform and voting rights. Both efforts died