Michael D. Shear, John Eligon and Maggie Haberman

Their unapologetic support for President Donald Trump was greeted with huge applause this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Days before, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who is white, testified in Congress that the president is a racist who had once said that black people were “too stupid” to vote for him.

“I don’t believe the president said that,” Owens said in an interview from the bustling convention hall on Friday. “The second you put him in front of a crowd of black Americans, they love him. They walk away and they say, ‘he’s amazing.'”

All three women are part of the small but diverse collection of black Trump supporters who operate out of TV studio green rooms and appear at rallies far from the president’s inner circle in the West Wing. They advocate on the president’s behalf. Their very presence, some of Trump’s backers argue, is evidence that the president’s critics are wrong that he is a racist.

At the committee hearing, the surprise appearance of a black Trump surrogate raised fresh debates in Washington about the paltry number of black people who are in Trump’s orbit — the few that have worked in his private company or in his White House, serve in his Cabinet, and speak for him on his favorite medium of cable news — and what their presence means for the administration.

According to some polls, 92 percent of black voters, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, disapprove of Trump. But even among the small collection of Trump’s African-American supporters, there are factions.

There are the true believers who maintain he can do no wrong; the ones who stick with the president even when his rhetoric makes them queasy; those who agree with his policies but dislike how some black Trump supporters play to racial stereotypes. And then there are the black Republicans who believe that Trump has no interest in helping black people and are exasperated by the African-Americans who still defend him.

Raynard Jackson, a veteran black political strategist and Trump supporter, said he winced during the Cohen hearings when Lynne Patton, a black member of the administration, was summoned and stood silently behind Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a white, conservative congressman, to counter Cohen’s claims that the president is racist.

“I was horrified,” Jackson said. “Any black person that has half of a brain would have said to Congressman Meadows, ‘I’m not going to allow you to use me as a prop.'”

The awkward moment underscored the racial tensions in the room as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, a Palestinian-American Democrat, accused her colleague of trotting Patton out as “a prop,” which she deemed racist. It also underscored the divisions among Trump’s very few black, conservative supporters.

Trump’s most active black surrogates have formed something of a support group, talking everyday to discuss policy or lament their critics, said Katrina Pierson, who is black and a senior adviser on Trump’s 2020 campaign. One of those conversations came after Patton’s appearance at the hearing, Pierson said.

“We know that black media is going to tear us down and try to take away our credibility, although we’re probably the most credible for the community,” she said.

Other African-American conservatives are not so sure of that. Several black Republicans said their own credibility has been hurt by the actions of some of the president’s most visible black surrogates.

Harold Doley, 71, is a longtime wealthy Republican who opposes Trump. Doley pointed to rapper Kanye West’s appearance with Trump in the Oval Office last year, calling it a “bad and embarrassing minstrel show” that served to only drive black people away from the GOP.

“People look at that and say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of that,'” Doley said.

Trump received 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, according to some estimates. During a 2016 campaign speech, he pledged to win 95 percent of black voters by 2020, and that the GOP would be the new home of the African-American voter.

Over the years, Trump has faced increasingly public charges of racism for his comments on “shithole countries” in Africa, his doubling down on the guilt of the Central Park Five, a group of young men convicted of assaulting and raping a white woman but later exonerated, the housing discrimination complaints leveled against him and his father, promoting birtherism and calling for violence against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is the only African-American in Trump’s Cabinet. Omarosa Maginault-Newman, the one-time White House adviser, was the only black member of his senior staff; Trump fired her at the end of 2017 and she later wrote a book accusing the president of being a racist.

Still, the black supporters who are willing to shrug off their thin ranks point to the president’s public history of having friendships with African-American celebrities as evidence that Trump is not the kind of bigot that Maginault-Newman and the majority of black voters consider him.

Paris Dennard, who is black and one of the president’s most fervent evangelists, said he had lost many black Republican friends because of his support for Trump. He added that the president has a special appreciation for the black people who stick up for him under such intense scrutiny.

“He’s very aware of the pressure and the toll that it takes on African-American supporters,” he said.

At CPAC on Saturday, the president hailed Owens by name, congratulating her on an upcoming wedding and saying that she is part of a group of young activists who are fighting what he called “unbelievable anger” from the left. “You have the courage to speak the truth. To do what is right and to fight for what you believe. And keep doing it,” Trump said.

Those black conservatives who have distanced themselves from the president said they have done so for good reason. A.R. Bernard, a black pastor from Brooklyn, was a member of an evangelical advisory council for Trump, but quit because the president failed to condemn white supremacists in response to the deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Bernard recalled a dinner with Trump and other clergy two years ago when he tried to impress upon the president how black and white people experience poverty differently. The president did not give any feedback, Bernard recalled, and seemed uninterested in what he had to say.

Even if a black adviser to the president wanted to effect change for black people, Bernard said, “I think you have to be willing to tell him what he needs to hear, but also accept being ignored.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a liberal New Yorker who has known Trump for many years, used to say he did not know whether Trump was racist. “I do now,” Sharpton said this week.

Sharpton said it irked him that some of the president’s African-American allies cited his mostly “transactional relationship” with Trump as an example of why the president isn’t racist.

Jackson, the veteran black political strategist, said he faulted Trump for surrounding himself with black people who told him what he wanted to hear rather than what he needed to hear, but he continues to support Trump because of his economic policies, he said.

“I can huff and puff until we get a new president, or I can stay engaged and try to make a difference from the inside” of the conservative movement, he said. “It’s just a level of maturity and wisdom, knowing that if I keep agitating, I think I can make a difference.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/trump-black-supporters.html" id="9b0dad98-45c0-3387-ad8e-033809d4bc1f">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — The surprise hits of this week’s annual gathering of right-wing activists in Washington were appearances by three black women. Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, better known as “Diamond and Silk,” thanked the organizers for inviting them — “two conservative black chicks” — before mocking reparations. Candace Owens, the fiery young YouTube sensation, called on black people to escape from the country’s liberal ideology.

Trump's Black Supporters: Inside a Small and Divided World

<h1>Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, better known as “Diamond and Silk,” thanked the organizers for inviting them — “two conservative black chicks” — before mocking reparations. </h1>

Candace Owens, the fiery young YouTube sensation, called on black people to escape from the country’s liberal ideology.

Their unapologetic support for President Donald Trump was greeted with huge applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which concluded Saturday with an appearance by the president. Days before, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, testified before a congressional committee that the president is a racist who had once said that black people were “too stupid” to vote for him.

At the committee hearing, the surprise appearance of a black Trump surrogate raised fresh debates in Washington about the paltry number of black people who are in Trump’s orbit — the few who have worked in his private company or in his White House, serve in his Cabinet, and speak for him on his favorite medium of cable news — and what their presence means for the administration.

Trump received 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, according to some estimates. During a 2016 campaign speech, he pledged to win 95 percent of black voters by 2020.

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is the only African-American in Trump’s Cabinet. Omarosa Manigault Newman, the one-time White House adviser, was the only black member of his senior staff; Trump fired her at the end of 2017 and she later wrote a book accusing the president of being a racist.

Still, the black supporters who are willing to shrug off their thin ranks point to the president’s public history of having friendships with African-American celebrities as evidence that Trump is not the kind of bigot that Manigault Newman and the majority of black voters consider him.

Trump's black supporters inside a small and divided world

WASHINGTON — The surprise hits of the annual gathering of right-wing activists in Washington were appearances by three black women.

Trump's black supporters: inside a small and divided world

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Michael D. Shear, John Eligon and Maggie Haberman

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Trump's Black Supporters: Inside a Small and Divided World

Trump's black supporters: inside a small and divided world