Former President Donald Trump is using his conviction for supposed hush money payments to appeal to Black voters, especially males, saying that he understands an unfair justice system.
The push for Black voters is infuriating President Joe Biden and Democrats, with Biden claiming last week that Trump is "pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your vote, so he can win for himself, not for you."
Part of their dismay is because Trump's strategy is working: polls suggest that up to 20% of Black voters plan to vote for Trump in November, a huge jump from the 8% who did so in 2020.
If Blacks vote for Trump in those numbers, it could mean a huge loss for Biden in a tight race.
Trump has been using his allies like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to woo Black voters as well. Scott addressed the justice issue after the Trump guilty verdict came down on Thursday.
"The reason we're seeing so many African Americans come into the Trump campaign — two big things: jobs and justice," Scott told CNN on Friday.
"As an African American born and raised in the Deep South who had concerns about our justice system as it relates to race, I'm now seeing it play out from a partisan perspective," he added.
There is a difference between poor Black men who end up losing in court because they don't have access to resources to defend themselves and Trump, who has virtually unlimited resources but got stuck in a location where just about everyone hates him.
Both are examples of injustice in the justice system, however, and that's Trump's point.
Hopefully he is ready to do something real to fix things if and when he gets into office, since he's making an issue of it now.
Trump apparently raised $52 million in the 24 hours after he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, which seems to indicate that he may get another poll bump.
Democrats just can't help themselves, though, and are doubling down on their rabid efforts to get Trump by calling him a "convicted felon" every chance they get.
It doesn't really matter if Trump is a convicted felon if the public perceives the verdict as unfair; the sympathy Trump gets will more than offset any harm from being a so-called felon.
It's also possible that the more Democrats push the "convicted felon" narrative, the more it will hurt them and help Trump, meaning their plans to turn voters toward Biden will have backfired massively.
