This relationship was on display on Monday, when the rapper 50 Cent said to "vote for Trump" in response to Democratic nominee Joe Biden's tax plan.
At the Republican National Convention in August, speakers including the former NFL star Herschel Walker and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott lacquered Trump with praise.
With the 2020 presidential election coming down to the wire, it's clear that Team Trump is hoping to maximize its appeal with Black voters. During the final debate on Thursday, NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump and Biden if they understand why Black parents have to give their children "the talk" about how to handle encounters with the police. The President said yes -- before he quickly moved on and claimed to be "the least racist person in the room," a response that was at odds with his track record and failed to reflect if he truly understands anything about the Black experience.
Just last month, the Trump campaign announced a thinly detailed "Platinum Plan," which extends a promise of Black economic development.
At first glance, such maneuvering is puzzling. The President is decidedly unpopular with the Black electorate: In September, Gallup reported that Trump's job approval rating among Black Americans hovers at 11%. According to a January Washington Post/Ipsos poll, more than 8-in-10 black Americans believe that Trump is a racist.
On Friday, California Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, knocked the President for his efforts.
"Donald Trump has this goal to turn 20% of Black men out in favor of him. Donald Trump who pushed, as part of his popularity, the theme that the first Black man to be President of the United States was illegitimately there," she said.
But the Trump campaign isn't without a strategy.
According to Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, where he studies the role of race in electoral politics, figures such as Walker and 50 Cent share a few meaningful characteristics.
"If you're a Republican presidential candidate, you recognize that most Black people aren't going to vote for you. But the most likely segment of Black people to vote for you is Black men, and a particular sort of Black man," Johnson told CNN. "It wasn't surprising that after Trump became the President-elect, a parade of Black men -- celebrities and athletes including Steve Harvey, Ray Lewis and Kanye West -- went into Trump Tower. If you're a Black man and a celebrity or an athlete, that usually means that the money you have is new and that you grew up either poor or working class."
Johnson believes that there's something about this brew of economic security, hypermasculinity and bootstrap self-determination -- "he has accomplished so much almost all by himself," Walker says of the President in a spot airing on Black radio stations -- that can make Trump resonate with some Black men.
In 2016, 13% of Black men who voted cast their ballots for Trump. For Black women, this figure was a meager 4%. (Notably, men of every race supported Trump more than the women of t
