McEnany: Romney can say 'black lives matter' but Trump got 8% of the black vote

On Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany cited Donald Trump’s single-digit performance with black voters in 2016 to attack Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for his participation in a protest against police violence in Washington, D.C.

On Sunday, Romney explained to reporters that he was marching “to make sure that people understand that black lives matter.”

Asked about Romney’s action and whether Trump agrees that black lives matter, McEnany said, “Trump won 8% of the black vote, and Mitt Romney won 2% of the black vote.” She went on to attack Romney for comments he made during the 2012 election.

But her attack was also false. In 2012, Romney won 6% of the black vote in his loss to President Barack Obama.

McEnany was accurate in her citation of Trump’s performance in 2016, but that was dwarfed by the 89% of the black vote that Secretary Hillary Clinton received.

Trump has struggled among black voters, who have consistently given him extremely low levels of support throughout his time in office. A poll earlier this year showed that 80% of black voters say Trump has made racism in the United States worse, and 83% called him racist. He has fared even worse among black women, with whom he had only 3% support in a poll last year.

From a June 8 White House press briefing:

REPORTER: Kayleigh, does he agree in general, the way that Mitt Romney stated over the weekend, he does, with the core message of black lives matter?

 

McENANY: Yeah, Mitt Romney can say three words outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, but I would note this: that President Trump won 8% of the black vote, and Mitt Romney won 2% of the black vote.

 

I believe President Trump — people across the country recognize that while Mitt Romney has a lot of words, notably he said that 47% of the nation is dependent upon government, believes they are victims, believes that the government has a responsibility to care for them — those were Mitt Romney’s words, not too long ago. The president takes great offense to those words. That’s not America.

 

Guess what America is? It’s when given opportunity, via a Trump opportunity zone, belief that Americans of all races can rise to the occasion and achieve, belief in HBCUs and giving funding, record funding, to HBCUs, because we need to enable and education [sic] in our country and school choice. Those kinds of actions on the part of the president stand in stark contrast with the very empty words of Sen. Romney.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.