Debatable

Rachel Martin: So I want to ask about one particular moment. The moderator, Kristen Welker of NBC, asked President Trump what he would say to Americans who have not liked how he has talked about race or seemed to exacerbate racial divides in this country. And this is how he responded. Let's play this tape.

President Trump: Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump. And if you look, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln - possible exception - but the exception of Abraham Lincoln, nobody has done what I've done.

Ms. Martin then turned to Republican political strategist Scott Jennings, and asked him if Republicans actually believed that. And Mr. Jennings said he could do without the bravado of the answer, and then went on: "However, if you listen, that entire exchange, Donald Trump actually does have a story to tell. When you talk about criminal justice reform and his support of the historically Black colleges and universities, the economic numbers pre-COVID, he has a story to tell."

President Trump is often described as not speaking to minority communities in the United States, but about them, with the audience for his comments being those people among his base who want to see the President (and, by extension, their vote for him) as non-racist. Scott Jennings' characterization of the the story that the President has to tell plays into this description.

The problem, for the most part, isn't the Black incarceration rate or the Black education rate in and of themselves; it's the fact that there is a significant difference between those numbers and the White incarceration rate and education rate. A rising tide that lifts all boats is always nice, but if the question is what has been done for a specific community lately, there needs to be more of a focus on what closes the gaps. And since the President's audience isn't the people who would benefit from those gaps closing, this is rarely dealt with.

The economic numbers, pre-COVID, weren't doing a much better job. The recovery from The Great Recession has shown the unemployment rate for Black Americans closing the gap with White Americans, but this progress was leveling off under President Trump. And while the President disclaims responsibility for it, the massive disruption to the job market done by the pandemic erased some five years of that progress.

And that aside, Black people in America are not the nation's only, or even the most populous, minority group. Boiling the question of race to one of Black and White misses most of the point. And so does framing the answer in terms of criminal justice reform and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, because about 40% of the country falls outside of the category of "non-Hispanic White" Americans, while Black people are only about 12% of the population. And it's not as if the President has never had anything to say about any of the other 28%, some half or more of whom are Hispanic. For Republicans to decide that whenever one of their own is criticized about race, they can simply talk about what they've supposedly done for Black Americans is to presume that no-one else matters. But that is on-brand, I suppose.