Kushner Says Black Americans Must “Want to Be Successful” to Benefit from Trump’s Policies

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a top adviser, said Black people must “want to be successful” if they want to benefit from Trumpian policies.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Kushner said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”

You can watch Kushner’s remarks below.

Polling indicates that Black men might still see some appeal in the Trump campaign despite Trump’s history of remarks that have been criticized for being racist.

Last month, a Gallup poll found that 11 percent of Blacks approve of Trump’s job performance. (Democrat Joe Biden leads Trump among Black voters 90 percent to five percent.)

“If you’re a Republican presidential candidate, you recognize that most Black people aren’t going to vote for you. But the most likely segment of Black people to vote for you is Black men, and a particular sort of Black man,” Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who studies the role race plays in electoral politics, told CNN over the weekend. “It wasn’t surprising that after Trump became the President-elect, a parade of Black men — celebrities and athletes including Steve Harvey, Ray Lewis and Kanye West — went into Trump Tower. If you’re a Black man and a celebrity or an athlete, that usually means that the money you have is new and that you grew up either poor or working class.”

Alan Ryland

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.