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Don and I went deep this week on a question that neither of us can fully wrap our heads around: how does any Black person look at what Trump is doing right now and still ride with him?
Not just the politicians, not the influencers, but the everyday Black person? We talked about it from every angle. The grift. The self-hatred. The proximity to power. The complete absence of any material benefit. And we couldn’t land on a satisfying answer, which I think says something on its own.
This conversation came the morning after my appearance on MS NOW’s The 11th Hour, where I made the case that Trump is the most openly anti-Black president in modern history. Don had been sitting with the same question. So we just went in.
What came out of it was less a tidy analysis and more an honest reckoning: two Black men trying to make sense of something that, at its core, defies logic. The Black conservative grift is real, and it’s well-funded. But the politicians and influencers cashing in are one thing. The everyday Black person chanting four more years at the White House is something else entirely. That’s what we couldn’t shake.
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
The Black Conservative Grift
The politicians and influencers backing Trump aren’t confused. They’re calculating. I made the case that Black conservatism, in its current MAGA form, is a business model first and an ideology second, and the receipts are everywhere.
Tim Scott and Wesley Hunt are the clearest examples. Tim Scott has been making excuses for Trump’s racism for years. Wesley Hunt said Jim Crow is over, nothing to see here. I said it plainly: these people have sold what’s left of their souls for this party. Don asked how any Black lawmaker could look at what’s happening to voting rights and defend it. Neither of us had a satisfying answer.
The money is on the right, and everyone knows it. I told Don I get more right-wing advertising requests than liberal ones because that’s where the funding is concentrated. Nicki Minaj’s numbers were slipping, she needed clout, and suddenly, she’s MAGA and on stage with Erika Kirk. Candace Owens built an entire career on it. I said it directly: if Don and I woke up tomorrow and said, ‘You know what, Trump’s got a point,’ we’d be flooded with right-wing cash and get recruited to run for office within a week. That’s the architecture.
Byron Donalds in Selma was something I witnessed firsthand. I was there for the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Donalds had the nerve to stand at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attack Section 5 pre-clearance of the Voting Rights Act. I tried to ask him a question. Someone in the crowd yelled, “You not like us!” He ran off before anyone could get a real answer. Don noted the mutation point: white supremacy doesn’t survive by staying visible. It takes the laws built to protect Black people and weaponizes them in the other direction. That’s what facially neutral laws applied with systemic racism look like.
Omarosa was an early case study, not a cautionary tale anyone heeded. I pointed out that she went ride or die for Trump and got cast aside like everyone else. Don noted he knew her before things soured. The pattern is consistent: Black conservatives do the groveling, get used as props, and get replaced by the most mediocre available alternative when the moment passes. Tim Scott did everything asked of him, and they chose JD Vance anyway.
The Reckoning Coming
Don asked me to take it as homework: figure out why every day Black people are still supporting what’s happening. I took the assignment. But I also made the case that the historical judgment is already forming, and the people who enabled this are going to have to live with it.
For the everyday Black Trump supporter, there is no material benefit. I made this point directly: you can at least understand the politicians and influencers, they’re doing it for money and access. But the everyday Black person? Trump raised Black unemployment through federal purges that disproportionately targeted Black workers. He signed executive orders pressuring the private sector to end DEI. Prices are up. Political representation is being stripped. Don asked what they see in it and landed on proximity to whiteness, proximity to power. The faces at the Black History Month celebration said it all.
Don laid out the full record, and it is damning. The racist Obama video. “My African American.” Shithole countries. The Central Park Five. Housing discrimination. Higher taxes on the poor. Fewer services for underserved communities. And now, Black voting representation is being systematically dismantled. Don said he kept waiting for one of those moments to break through. None of them did. He landed on self-hatred, naivety, and pick-me as the most honest descriptors he was willing to say out loud.
The reckoning is coming, whether people are ready for it or not. I said it plainly: a decade or two from now, the people who enabled this are going to face a historical judgment. The comedians are already abandoning Trump. The polling is turning. And I think any Black people who backed this are going to have to reckon with the fact that they backed an openly anti-Black president who legislated against their own power. The question Don left me with, and the one I’m still sitting with, is how you get through to someone before that reckoning arrives.
To be clear, the overwhelming majority of Black Americans have not gone MAGA. Black voters remain one of the most consistently anti-Trump demographics in the country. But the ones who have, whether for clout, proximity to power, or genuine belief, are visible enough to warrant the conversation Don and I had. Even a small percentage of a large community is real people making a real choice, and that choice deserves scrutiny, not dismissal.
Bottom Line
There’s a difference between the grifters and the true believers, but the result is the same: Black political and economic power gets eroded either way. Don and I couldn’t resolve the question of why an everyday Black person looks at all of this and still says four more years. As for the politicians and influencers, it’s very clear why they do what they do. What we did resolve is that the historical record is being written right now, and it will be unsparing.
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