Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is lighting up Democrat President Joe Biden for only accepting an invitation to give the commencement address at Atlanta’s Morehouse College in May because it’s in the same neighborhood Trump visited when he made an iconic stop at a Chick-fil-A recently.
“It’s no coincidence that Joe Biden’s handlers signed him up to speak at Morehouse College days after President Trump received a tremendous reception in Atlanta and was warmly greeted by many of Morehouse’s very own students at Chick-fil-A,” Trump campaign national spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Breitbart News on Tuesday. “Biden’s team is panicking because Joe Biden no longer has a base, and African Americans are supporting President Trump by a historic margin. Biden’s entire campaign consists of him shuffling around the country and flip flopping on his policies to beg Americans who no longer support him to vote for him again. It’s not going to work – because the damage Joe Biden has done to all Americans, regardless of background, is unforgettable.”
Morehouse College is a very important Historically Black College & University (HBCU) as it is where civil rights movement icon Martin Luther King Jr. got his bachelor’s degree at age 19. It is also the college that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who is among the very few publicly celebrating Biden’s planned speech there, attended. Most others are joining team Trump in ripping Biden.
Leavitt’s smackdown of Biden comes after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported late on Monday that Biden finally accepted a nearly year-old invitation from Morehouse College to give this year’s commencement address at the graduation ceremony on May 19.
EXCLUSIVE: President Joe Biden will deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College’s May 19 graduation ceremony, according to three officials with direct knowledge of the decision. https://t.co/adlSY6ZbRb
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution (@ajc) April 22, 2024
But that comes after Trump had already visited the area, earlier this month visiting a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta that employs many Morehouse students. An iconic moment during Trump’s visit saw a black woman warmly embrace Trump, telling him that black voters are ditching Biden to turn to him: “I don’t care what the media tells you, Mr. Trump. We support you.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, hugs a customer as he visits a Chick-fil-A eatery, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Atlanta. (Jason Allen/AP)
Many in the Morehouse College community do not see Biden’s trip as genuine at all:
Biden is giving the commencement address at Morehouse College, but students couldn’t care less:
“I don’t see myself being there. At the end of the day, this is kind of like something that’s on his political agenda to kind of maybe get more young Black voters.” pic.twitter.com/JAbnf56dfE
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 23, 2024
In addition, NBC News quoted a faculty member on background saying that people are “concerned” with Biden’s planned visit and that there is already growing “pushback” at Morehouse for extending the invitation.
“A Morehouse faculty member told NBC News administrators are believed to be concerned that faculty members will join students in protest of Biden during the ceremony,” NBC News reported. “The pushback against leadership’s decision comes amid increasing protests on college campuses over Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The protests since the war began in October have already forced Biden, and other top administration officials, to dramatically scale back appearances at college campuses.”
Hard leftist protests against Biden are also likely to erupt when he goes:
statement from the faculty and staff for justice in palestine georgia chapter on morehouse college’s reprehensible decision to go forward with joe biden as the commencement speaker pic.twitter.com/WjB85U2505
— 💖 (@farmereva_) April 23, 2024
There are already calls on the left to get Morehouse to rescind the invitation of Biden:
Justice group urging Morehouse to rescind Biden invite https://t.co/kGdpmehv5p
— FOX 5 Atlanta (@FOX5Atlanta) April 23, 2024
As a Morehouse graduate I encourage every AUC student to SHUT THIS DOWN. Joe Biden is not only actively conducting a genocide in Palestine- he is behind the building of Cop City where IOF training & tactics will find there way into our communities. https://t.co/F4QOugALCd
— Saul Williams (@SaulWilliams) April 20, 2024
Joe Biden is the speaker at Morehouse’s graduation and if he hasn’t ended the genocide and yall don’t speak up at that graduation I hope yall get bullied and I hope the community turns on yall!
— 🌙 (@dejnexdoor) April 23, 2024
If those kids at the Ivy leagues can turn up and be arrested protesting genocide, the graduating class at the school MLK went to damn sure better make their displeasure known. The Morehouse admin allowing Biden to use these kids commencement as a campaign stop is disrespectful. https://t.co/8DrHdqJdgJ
— CB (@CBurns20) April 23, 2024
Polling indicates that Trump’s support levels in the black community may be on track for record highs. In the midterm election, black voters ranked inflation and the economy as their top issue—and inflation continues to rage out of control in Biden’s America—while recent New York Times polling shows 80 percent of black voters have a negative view of the Biden-led economic conditions facing the country. A recent study by the Dallas Fed found Biden’s inflation hurts black Americans even more than white Americans—by more that double digits worse. And CNN ran this brutal headline for Biden in the summer of 2022: “As inflation soars, Black Americans bear the brunt of rising grocery, gas and housing prices.”
Top black Democrats like Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) even admit that his constituents say “Bidenomics” is hurting the black community:
New: Need more evidence that black lawmakers are panicking about Biden’s waning popularity among black voters?
“What I’m hearing in my district is how ‘Bidenomics’ hasn’t really hit them in the pocket,” Jamaal Bowman tells @NRO
More w/ @brittybernstein https://t.co/ocVQ9JrqUg pic.twitter.com/hSf6r89Qps— Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg) January 31, 2024
Wages are on the decline more drastically among black Americans than other demographics with Biden in the White House, too, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported in a story headlined: “Biden Is Losing Black Voters. Here’s Why It Matters.” The sub-headline of the story is even more brutal for Biden: “Concerns about the economy are driving away minorities who’ve long supported Democrats.”
What’s more, Biden’s Orwellian-named “Inflation Reduction Act,” which does not actually reduce inflation, hired more than 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans and a study the New York Times highlighted last year shows that black Americans are more likely than other demographics to face IRS audits. In 2019, ProPublica highlighted a study that shows the five counties in America with the highest IRS audit rates were predominantly black counties.
As Biden’s policies have severely harmed black Americans, black voters are responding in kind by turning away from him—and toward Trump. Earlier this year, Fox News polling showed Biden lost 25 percent of black voter support from 2021 to 2023—a fatal blow for him in a key constituency.
More polling from late last year highlighted by the Associated Press shows Biden’s approval rating among black voters plummeting down to a measly 50 percent. That AP article in question quotes a number of Democrats warning that Biden is losing these voters in a big way.
Trump has for years, including in his 2016 campaign, during his presidency, and now during his campaign to remove Biden and retake the White House, aggressively courted black voters. While he was in office, he pushed more funding for Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) and created Opportunity Zones to increase economic incentives in — among other places — black communities nationwide.
Whether Trump is able to capitalize on black voters’ apparent disinterest in reelecting Biden and win their support, or enough of it to make a difference in key swing states, remains to be seen. But one thing is abundantly clear from Biden’s decision to follow Trump to Atlanta with this Morehouse College address in a month: The Democrat president is so terrified he’s losing serious enough ground to Trump in places like this that he’s literally trying to copy Trump in racing to the same neighborhood Trump already visited to undo the damage Biden’s economic and other failures have caused him.
