WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump warned during his debate with Joe Biden and again at a rally Friday that migrants would take away “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans, angering critics who called it a racist and offensive attempt to broaden his appeal beyond his white conservative base.
While President Joe Biden’s hesitant performance in Thursday night’s debate raised grave doubts among his fellow Democrats about his readiness to campaign, Trump also repeatedly made false claims and repeated conspiracy theories that he has long spread during the campaign.
Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats wanted migrants to displace Americans as voters, and he described the state of the nation under Biden as worse than during the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has often downplayed the racist undertones of the march, once saying there were “good people on both sides.”
Trump’s portrayal of a country on the brink, burdened by rampant migration and ravaged by racial tensions and economic chaos, reflects his longstanding rhetoric about the state of the United States. It’s a bleak vision that has long resonated with the Republicans’ predominantly white, far-right voting base but has alienated other Americans, particularly voters of color.
“The fact is, his biggest murder of black people is the millions of people he’s allowing to come across the border. They’re taking black people’s jobs now,” Trump said during the debate on CNN. “They’re taking black people’s jobs and they’re taking Hispanics’ jobs. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history,” he warned, without specifying the danger.
But Trump and his allies believe such rhetoric could resonate more this year with black and Hispanic communities unhappy with Biden’s performance in office. Trump repeated the comments during a rally in Virginia on Friday.
The phrase “jobs for blacks” was widely condemned by Democrats and black leaders as vague and offensive.
“I still wonder what a ‘black job’ is,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison joked Friday during a press conference with former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Atlanta. Other prominent Biden allies, including Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) and Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia), also condemned Trump’s words after the debate.
“There is no such thing as a black job. This misguided characterization denies the ubiquity of black talent. We are doctors, lawyers, school teachers, police officers and firefighters. The list goes on,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. “A ‘black job’ is an American job. It is troubling that a presidential candidate would try to make a nonexistent distinction. But the divisive nature of this remark is no surprise to Donald Trump.”
Trump’s allies rejected the criticism, saying they disagreed with the president’s broader message.
“He meant black jobs. And we’ve been using that term for some time,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation. “It’s about every job. Instead of blacks having unrestricted access to all kinds of jobs, illegal immigrants are taking their jobs away.”
Numerous economic studies show that immigration has helped enhance employment. For example, in a 2024 study, economists Alessandro Caiumi and Giovanni Peri found that immigration had a positive impact on the wages of U.S.-born, less-educated workers between 2000 and 2019. However, independent research has suggested that increased immigration may have hurt the wages of less-educated black men, although this was only one of several factors.
When Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina – a black man who is being considered as Trump’s vice presidential candidate – was asked in an interview with NBC News to clarify what Trump meant by describing a “black job,” he dodged the question and instead talked about homeless veterans.
Some black adults actually believe immigration could hurt job opportunities for workers already here. According to a March AP-NORC poll, about 4 in 10 black adults say it’s a “big risk” that immigrants coming to the U.S. – whether they enter legally or illegally – will reduce the number of jobs available to American workers. But the poll also found that about 3 in 10 black adults think it’s a large advantage that immigrants fill jobs that Americans don’t want.
In some communities, like Chicago, the rising number of immigrants has led to greater economic anxiety and concerns that government resources are not being distributed equitably. Still, black and Hispanic people are, on average, more pro-immigration than other demographics, and in cities like Chicago, Denver and New York, racial justice groups have been at the forefront of efforts to defuse potential conflicts between communities of color and the undocumented on issues like jobs.
For some black activists, these comments did little to change the state of the presidential campaign.
Michael Blake, founder and CEO of the Kairos Democracy Project, said: “It’s hard to believe that (Trump) means he’s taking away quality jobs.”
“It’s our responsibility to tell the story of the benefits of diversity, rather than the fears of it. And the message that these people are taking from you is a pure message of fear, rather than asking: How do we all win?” Blake added. “When you include all races, we all win. We shouldn’t let fear of the past crowd out the prosperity of the future, because we can all win.”
