African American Lawmakers For Trump, A Deal With The Devil
White supremacy is metastasizing in the nation, while trump and other Republicans cozy up to hate groups and inexplicably, a handful of African American politicians and other personalities continue to genuflect before trump and the Republican Party.
It’s no less mystifying why gay lawmakers, the so-called “Log Cabin Republicans,” would still be members of a political party that is trying to destroy the LGBTQ community.
There are currently 63 African American members of Congress; 58 are Democrats and just five are Republicans.
The higher profile, African American lawmakers, candidates and media personalities still under the GOP spell, include Daniel Cameron, Herschel Walker, Byron Donalds, Mark Robinson, Tim Scott, Burgess Owens, Wesley Hunt, John James, Candace Owens and Paris Dennard.
Cameron, endorsed by trump, won the recent Republican primary for governor of Kentucky. A conservative and Kentucky’s first African American attorney general, Cameron was gushing in praise for trump.
“Let me just say the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky,” said Cameron.
After winning the GOP primary, Cameron slathered trump with compliments, saying he is “strong on the military,” “a fierce defender of our borders” and a protector of “our totally under-siege Second Amendment.”
Cameron didn’t mention that Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis applauded the white marine who strangled a mentally ill African American man on a New York City subway.
He didn’t mention that trump continues with his absurd and totally refuted claim that the 2020 election was rigged and that trump urged supporters to riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
He didn’t mention that many Republicans fought to defeat Democratic proposals in Congress to make it easier for minorities to register and to vote. He didn’t mention that trump didn’t distance himself from a Mar-a-Lago dinner he had with avowed, white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Cameron won dubious applause from trump in 2020 after the then-attorney general decided not to charge officers involved in the March 13, 2020, shooting death of Breonna Taylor. The Louisville branch of the NAACP asked Cameron to resign In September 2022, saying he failed to conduct a fair investigation into Taylor’s shooting death, and was unfit to remain in office.
Taylor was a 26-year-old African American woman who was shot and killed by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment. At least seven police officers forced their way into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside the apartment with Taylor when the plainclothes officers knocked on the door and then broke the door down. The officers said that they announced themselves as police before forcing entry, but Walker said he did not hear any announcement, thought the officers were intruders, and fired a warning shot at them when they returned fire, striking Taylor.
The killing by white police officers and the initial lack of charges for Taylor’s death, led to numerous protests that added to those across the United States against police brutality and racism.
Cameron will face Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in the November general election.
Cameron was on a 20-person shortlist of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees by trump.
Byron Donalds is one of four black Republicans in the House and was elected in 2020 to represent Florida’s 19th congressional district. During his campaign, Donalds described himself as a “trump supporting, gun owning, liberty loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.”
Most recently, Donalds revealed that he was mailed a copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, to insinuate a racial slur against him. During the House Speaker’s election, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., made a similar insinuation, calling Donalds a “prop.”
In 1997, Donalds was arrested for marijuana distribution; the charges were dropped as part of a pre-trial diversion program. In 2000, he pleaded no contest to a felony bribery charge as part of a scheme to defraud a bank. His record was later sealed and expunged.
In late 2020, Donalds was identified as a participant in the “Freedom Force,” a group of incoming House Republicans who “say they’re fighting against socialism in America.” In January 2021, Donalds voted to object to the certification of electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election. Donalds was later blocked from joining the Congressional Black Caucus.
In January, Donalds lost a bid to be elected Speaker of the House. He was nominated by far right Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. and had support of equally far right members of congress, Scott Perry, R-Pa., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.
Republican Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s first African American, lieutenant governor, has entered the race for governor, where he hopes to be elected as the state’s first African American governor.
A far right conservative, Robinson has fought to restrict LGBTQ+ rights, abortion and the role of women and has made statements deemed as anti-Semitic and Islamophobic. He denies human responsibility for climate change, wants to remove science and social studies from elementary schools and would abolish his state’s board of education.
A former factory worker and daycare operator, Robinson said in a 2021 speech, “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.”
He claimed that the Marvel movie “Black Panther” was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists” that was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets” (using a Yiddish slang for Black). Robinson has called former President Obama “a worthless, anti-American atheist” and has posted “birther” memes claiming Obama was not a U.S. citizen.
Robinson had filed for bankruptcy three times, has been sued for payments, and had liens placed on him by the Internal Revenue Service as recently as 2012. He has acknowledged that in 1989, he paid for a woman that he impregnated to get an abortion,
Tim Scott, R-S.C., the only African American in the Senate, hopes to be the second African American president. Scott filed legal papers on Friday to run for president.
Scott is Republican to the core. He opposes teaching critical race theory, an academic framework that presents the idea that the nation’s institutions maintain the dominance of white people.
He was less than critical of trump following trump’s notorious response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Trump famously said there were bad people on both sides, drawing parallels between the white supremacists and protesters.
Scott said trump’s principles had been compromised and that without some introspection, “it will be hard for him to regain … moral authority.”
In January 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Charleston County, S.C., for racial discrimination under the Voting Rights Act, because its council seats were based on at-large districts. The result has been that nearly all of the county officials have been white, even though African Americans are 34.5 percent of the population.
Scott disagreed and that he didn’t like segregating voters into smaller districts and that African Americans can be fairly represented by whites. The Department of Justice won the case and a new redistricting plan replaced the at-large method of electing the Charleston City Council.
Scott also has declined to join the all-Democratic Congressional Black Caucus. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. He opposes same-sex marriage and is against instructing gender identity in schools.
Scott wants to make English the official language in the government and to require new immigrants to learn English. He opposes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Burgess Owens, R-Utah, a former professional football player, described his views as “very conservative” and at a House Committee on the Judiciary subcommittee, he testified against providing reparations for slavery.
Owens called trump “an advocate for black Americans.” Owens said Democrats in Washington are held in thrall by Marxists and socialists and that “The days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill are over. We’re dealing with people who hate our country.”
In August 2022, Owens co-sponsored a bill put forth by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to criminalize gender-affirming health care for trans youth. In 2021, Owens opposed the For the People Act, a Democratic-sponsored bill to reform election laws.
Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, had trump’s full endorsement as he began a first term in 2023.
“Wesley Hunt will defend our values against the radical agenda of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” his website says.
On the issues, Hunt said that Biden’s Title 42 immigration decision “will create a national catastrophe.” Biden discontinued Title 42 which allowed the U.S. to reject immigrants as a way to keep down the number of infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reports have shown that immigration has climbed slightly since Title 42 ended.
Hunt said that Biden’s “war on American energy is killing the middle class.” He said the recently-released Durham Report “suggests that President Trump and his campaign were illegally spied on. Hillary Clinton and her campaign’s actions represent a clear and present danger to our republic, and if these allegations are true, everyone involved should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The report was prepared by special counsel John Durham, the prosecutor appointed under trump, to investigate potential government wrongdoing in the early days of the Trump-Russia probe. Durham ended the four-year investigation and sharply criticized the FBI but managed to gain indictments of just two minor officials.
John James, R-Mich., is in his first term after being endorsed by trump.
James supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries but later switched to back trump and tweeted in 2018 that, if elected to the Senate, he would back Trump “2,000%.”
James has not been publicly critical of trump but during a meeting with black faith leaders, he was asked if he disagreed with trump on anything.
“Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to ‘shithole countries’ to speaking ill of the dead. I mean, where do you want to start?” James said in a leaked audio recording. Asked why he hadn’t publicly criticized trump, James said he thought it was better to be silent in public in order to gain access to trump.
Candace Owens, an author and commentator, has been recognized for her pro-trump activism as a Black woman and her criticism of Black Lives Matter activists, who she called “a bunch of whiny toddlers, pretending to be oppressed for attention.” She has claimed that police violence against black people is not about racism and that police killings of black people is a trivial matter to African Americans.
Owens has claimed that the effects of white supremacy and white nationalism are exaggerated; that the 2020 presidential election was fixed so that trump would lose; and that climate change is a hoax.
Owens produces pro-trump commentary and in 2017, launched Red Pill Black, a website and YouTube channel that promotes black conservatism in the United States. In April 2018, avowed, anti-Semite, Kanye West, tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” In May 2018, trump said that Owens “is having a big impact on politics in our country. She represents an ever-expanding group of very smart ‘thinkers’, and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on… so good for our Country!”
Paris Dennard is conservative Republican political commentator, columnist and communications strategist. Dennard served on the advisory board for “Black Voices for Trump” for trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.
After trump was defeated, Dennard refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also was hired and later fired as the national spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Herschel Walker was one of the least qualified candidates ever, when he won trump’s blessings as Georgia’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. The former NFL star and longtime trump friend lost to incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock, in a campaign marked by Walker’s numerous lies about his education, his professional experience and his relationships with his children.
Walker claimed on his campaign website that he was his high school class valedictorian, a claim he later removed from the website. He claimed he had graduated from the University of Georgia “in the top 1 percent of his class.” In fact, he didn’t even graduate.
Walker said that part of one of his company’s corporate charter was to donate 15 percent of profits to charities. However, none of the four charities that Walker named as beneficiaries confirmed they actually received any donations.
Walker also received $535,200 in political contributions that were wired to his personal company, The Daily Beast reported. Walker received the money for his 2022 senate campaign from his friend, billionaire Dennis Washington.
In filing for divorce in December 2001, his then-wife accused Walker of “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.” After the divorce, she told the media that, during their marriage, Walker pointed a pistol at her head and said he would kill her.