Barack Obama says Black men’s support for Trump is ‘not acceptable’

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Barack Obama has said Black men’s support for Donald Trump is “not acceptable”, suggesting they were uncomfortable with a female candidate as the former Democratic president hit the campaign trail for Kamala Harris.

Obama said in an unannounced stop at a Harris campaign office in the swing state Pennsylvania that he had not detected the “same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighbourhoods and communities as we saw when I was running”.

The problem seemed to be “more pronounced with the brothers”, Obama said. Support for Trump, whom he said had denigrated women, was “not acceptable”.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that,” Obama, the first African-American US president, said hours before he was due to hold a rally for Harris, the vice-president, in Pittsburgh.

The comments come as Harris and Trump vie for undecided voters that could determine one of the tightest White House races in decades. Trump has made inroads with some Black male voters in battlegrounds such as Georgia, in contrast to Harris’s success in energising women voters.

Obama’s intervention comes less than a month before the election and marks a new effort to boost Harris, who was an early supporter of his bid for the White House in 2008. The former president remains among the most popular Democratic politicians and is one of its best communicators.

Obama said on Thursday that he was “speaking to men directly” when he said: “It makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.

“Women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time . . . when we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

Harris, the daughter of a Black father and an Indian-American mother, would be the first female US president. Polls put her in a dead heat with Trump in the seven swing states that will determine who wins the White House in November.

Several recent polls have shown that Harris’s levels of support are lower among Black voters, and Black men in particular, than Joe Biden had in 2020.