Trump campaign ramps up efforts to win over Black women with new video

Former President Donald Trump's campaign is releasing a new video Wednesday featuring a group of Black women who plan to vote for him as he tries to make inroads with a key part of Vice President Kamala Harris' base.

The video, titled “I’m Not With Her” and shared first with NBC News, includes more than a dozen Black women, including several from battleground states, expressing their opposition to Harris, with some framing the Democratic presidential nominee as being out of touch with Black voters.

"I and millions of others Black Americans will cast my vote for Donald J. Trump," Bebe Diamond of New York City said in the video.

One unnamed woman featured in the video from Kalamazoo County, Michigan, said she supports Trump because of the "economic policies our country experienced under his leadership as our 45th president."

The new video marks one of the Trump campaign’s most direct efforts yet to win over Black women, a group that traditionally overwhelmingly supports Democratic candidates. In the 2020 election, 90% of Black women supported Joe Biden, according to exit polls.

Trump and his allies have sought to frame that level of support as unearned.

“Black voters have been taken for granted by the Democratic Party for years, but President Trump’s message is resonating at historic levels because he is doing the work and meeting voters where they are,” said Janiyah Thomas, director of the Trump campaign's Black media.

The women featured in the video, according to the Trump campaign, include former Democratic and independent voters who switched over to the Republican Party in support of Trump, several of whom reside in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan. 

The campaign plans to share the video across its “Team Trump” social media accounts, as well as its “Black Voices for Trump” pages.

The Harris campaign downplayed Trump’s outreach to Black voters in a statement, noting his past attacks on Black women journalists and the former president referring to the annual gathering of Sigma Gamma Rho, a historically Black sorority, as “unimportant.”

“Let’s not forget that the electric mobilization efforts that we have seen across the country for the Harris-Walz ticket was led by tens of thousands of Black women who came together less than twenty-four hours after Vice President Harris launched her candidacy — raising seven figures for the new Harris for President campaign,” said Jasmine Harris, director of the Harris campaign’s Black media.

The video also comes after Trump and his campaign have baselessly attacked Harris' race and ethnicity. The vice president is Indian American and Black.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said during a National Association of Black Journalists conference last month. “So, I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?”

While some polls had suggested Trump could make marginal gains with Black women, the former president has acknowledged Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket could change the dynamic.

“It’s possible that I won’t do as well with Black women, but I do seem to be doing very well with other segments,” Trump said at a press conference this month at Mar-a-Lago, touting his improved standing with Hispanic and Black men.

Though Trump faces an uphill battle in his efforts to win over Black women, his campaign appears to be making it a priority. His campaign’s Black engagement team is led by Black women, headed by former Housing and Urban Development Administrator Lynne Patton.

During last month's Republican National Convention, Trump's campaign sought to highlight influencer Amber Rose, who identifies as biracial, as part of a wider effort to use culturally relevant surrogates to recruit more Black voters. As do most Black Trump surrogates, Rose dedicated much of her speech to dispelling the perception of Trump as racist.

“My entire family is racially diverse. And I believed the left wing propaganda that Donald Trump was a racist. I realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay or straight, it’s all love,” Rose said. “When you cut through the lies, you realize the truth. American families were better when Donald Trump was president.”

That messaging, paired with a growing list of endorsements from rappers and athletes that appeal to young people alike, has comprised the bulk of the Trump campaign’s outreach to Black voters. In June, Trump also launched a Black voter coalition group, "Black voters for Trump."

The campaign’s efforts to recruit Black voters will be aided in part by a conservative nonprofit group, Building America’s Future, which is planning a $10 million campaign seeking to reduce Black voter support for Harris by highlighting a White House proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. 

Government data has found Black smokers are significantly more likely to use menthol cigarettes, and the proposed ban has divided civil rights and health care groups.