President Donald Trump’s policies are helping blacks achieve the American Dream through “ladders of opportunity” for “the forgotten men and women throughout our country,” said Ja’Ron Smith, special assistant to the president for domestic policy, in a Thursday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
On Tuesday, Trump announced an end to federal restrictions on religious historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) accessing federal funding via loan guarantees for capital developments.
“This meant that your faith-based institutions, which have made such extraordinary contributions to America, were unfairly punished for their religious beliefs,” said Trump at an HBCU conference in Washington, DC. “From now on, faith-based HBCUs will enjoy equal access to federal support.”
Smith said, “If you look back at [Donald Trump’s] campaign history, he didn’t run on HBCUs. He didn’t run on the imprisoned, but he did run on helping the forgotten men and women throughout our country, and I think, historically, the segment of African-American male voters has been forgotten.”
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Smith speculated that Trump’s policies would continue increasing political support for the president relative to previous Republican presidents and presidential nominees.
“There are a lot of African-American males that have ended up in our criminal justice system, and there are a lot of individuals that aren’t going to colleges and getting on those ladders of opportunity,” said Smith. “The policies and infrastructure that the president has put in place have created new ladders. So I think there’s a strong possibility that we’re going to continue to build support you wouldn’t normally think he would have supported.”
Smith added, “[Blacks] want to be a part of American’s greatness and be a part of the American Dream, and since we have those ladders through President Trump’s leadership, I would imagine we’d certainly increase support in areas we wouldn’t have thought of.”
“Each and every day, we’re changing hearts and minds,” stated Smith. “At the end of the day, we have to tell our story, because the mainstream media is not really covering the work that we’re doing in these communities.”
Smith contrasted the politics of “upper-income” blacks with those of “lower-income” blacks.
“It’s always really been A Tale of Two Cities in the African-American community,” analogized Smith. “I come from the lower-income part of the track, but then you have another part of the track that is the upper-income blacks, and those individuals have a lot of representation in Washington. … The segment from the lower-middle classes [is] the forgotten community. … If you go talk to them, the people who are in these neighborhoods, you’re hearing them speak a different tone, especially when they learn that all these policies have been put in place because of the president’s leadership.”
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