Tavis Smiley on the black vote and Donald Trump’s mission statement
By Alex Bregman
Author and television host Tavis Smiley spoke to Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga about his new book, “50 for Your Future: Lessons From Down the Road,” and gave his take on the state of the 2016 presidential campaign and where the candidates stand with black voters.
In the book, which consists of 50 lessons he has learned throughout his career, Smiley advocates for everyone to have his or her own mission statement in life. When it comes to the presidential field, he thinks only Bernie Sanders has made his mission statement clear. “Bernie Sanders has gained what he’s gained because Americans are very clear on what he stands for,” Smiley said. “He’s talking about poverty, about income inequality, and about economic immobility, and all three of those things are tied together.”
As for Donald Trump, he told Golodryga, “One could ask, ‘What is Donald Trump’s mission statement?’ Well, you might get one answer at 12:00, another at 12:15, another at 12:30, another at 12:45 and another at 12:59. The problem is he’s all over the map. I don’t really know what Donald Trump believes except that he believes in Donald Trump.”
Smiley had harsh words for Ted Cruz too. “What Ted Cruz believes is starting to come more into focus, but it’s a belief that I think takes America in the wrong direction,” he said.
As for Hillary Clinton, he said, “I think it’s becoming clearer, even for women, the numbers are starting to move a little bit that people are starting to understand where Hillary stands.”
Smiley also gave his take on why Clinton is doing so well with black voters. “Hillary Clinton and her husband are so well known by the African-American community,” he told Golodryga. “He enjoyed the great support of the black community when he ran some years ago, so that relationship has accrued a great benefit to her this time around. It’s just familiarity.”
Sanders, on the other hand, “just didn’t have enough time to get known by the black community, because on the issues they care about, he’s speaking the truth.”
However, Smiley warned that Democrats “should not take the black vote for granted.”
The author outlined the reasons why Trump could sway some black voters in an op-ed posted last month, and he expanded on that in his conversation with Golodryga.
“On the issue of his anti-immigrant stance, as it’s been termed, his anti-Muslim stance, I’m not sure that black folks find that automatically disqualifying,” he said. “I hate to admit that. … On top of that, Donald Trump has, I call them BFOTs, black friends of Trump, who hang out with him in social circles, and you’ll notice these black friends of Trump have been very quiet. They may be campaigning for Hillary, but they’re going to be very nuanced in how they distance themselves from Trump, but not say anything bad about him because they hang out with him in New York in these social circles.”
Smiley noted, however, that he wrote the piece “before [Trump] went nutty with all of these comments [on abortion].”
As for Cruz, Smiley doesn’t see the Texas senator having much of a chance with black voters. “I can’t see how Cruz gets any significant piece whatsoever of the African-American vote because he is so rabid,” he said. “He is so radical in his positions and he’s made no overture, given no indication whatsoever that that vote even matters to him. People don’t care what you know until they know what you care. There’s no evidence whatsoever that he even cares about the African-American vote. He clearly cares less about the Hispanic vote given his policies. … This is not about personality. It’s about policy.”
Finally, Smiley gave his take on President Obama’s legacy in terms of race and black America. “Historians are going to have a hard time trying to juxtapose this reality — how, in the era of the first black president, the bottom fell out for black America,” he said.
