Trump says criminal trials and mugshot have helped him with black voters

Columbia, South Carolina: Donald Trump has suggested black voters have flocked to him because of the mugshot he had taken after being charged with election interference, comparing his criminal trials to the years of systemic discrimination they have faced.

Ahead of polls opening for the South Carolina primary race on Saturday (Sunday AEDT), Trump made a direct appeal to the black community – who make up about a quarter of the state – and suggested they like him because of his indictments.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at the Black Conservative Federation’s Annual BCF Honors Gala at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center

“When I did the mug shot in Atlanta … you know who embraced it more than anyone else? The black population,” Trump said, in reference to the historic image taken when he was arraigned at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta last year.

“A lot of people said that that’s why the black people like me, because they’ve been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

The comments, made at a Black Conservatives Federation event in the state capital of Columbia, were described as “disgusting” by Republican rival Nikki Haley, who cast her vote at a polling booth in Kiawah Island, pushing her mother Raj in a wheelchair, alongside her son Nalin and daughter Rena.

Haley, the 52-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants, has pitched herself as a “new generational leader” and has spent her campaign sounding the alarm about what might happen if Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination.

“Republicans will lose come November [at the general election],” the former UN ambassador told reporters. “This is a huge warning sign. We have to stop with the chaos, we have to stop with the drama, we have to stop with the bad soundbites that keep happening over and over again.”

Despite polls suggesting that Haley has a better chance of beating Joe Biden, she is widely expected to lose against Trump in her home state, adding to the string of defeats she has faced in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Supporters who turned out to vote for her were nonetheless hopeful that she would at least stay in the race long enough to narrow the gap with the former president, and continue to be a voice for conservatives who do not subscribe to Trump’s views.

Maryanne Belsei said she voted for Haley because she feels “strongly about female representation in our government and I feel strongly about what she represents for the future of our country”.

“I want her to stay involved and continue to be that voice, pushing people to answer for some of their behaviour in the past, and the stances that they’re taking going forward,” she said.

Republican presidential candidate former UN ambassador Nikki Haley arrives to vote with her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, and family.

Another voter, Joel, did not want his surname used, explaining that “things are touchy enough” in the US when it comes to pro and anti-Trump supporters.

He, too, voted for Haley, partly because she was a good governor in South Carolina – the job she had before Trump recruited her to be his UN ambassador – “but a deeper motive is to keep Trump from destroying Western civilisation”, he added.

Asked to explain the former president’s popularity, Joel shrugged and shook his head.

“It’s like this voodoo blindness has come over the otherwise sane people that I know, and I don’t understand it,” he said.

Others, like James Slavagna, said he supported Trump because he believed “the streets would be safer and cleaner” and “there would be more jobs and infrastructure” if the former president returned to office.

Haley supporter Maryanne Belsei says she supports the former UN ambassador’s White House bid because of what she represents for the future America.

“We have an office right now that is an embarrassment to the country,” he said of the Biden administration.

This primary race comes weeks after Joe Biden won the Democrat race in South Carolina in a landslide, in the absence of any serious challengers. However, that contest was marred by exceedingly low turnout, with only about 131,000 South Carolinians voting, making up about 4 per cent of registered voters statewide.

Joe Biden on the hustings in Charleston, South Carolina.

Crowds seemed much longer at many polling booths for the Republican race, in which any registered voter could take part, as long as they did not vote earlier in Biden’s primary.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who has endorsed Trump, said it was possible Democrats could use the state’s “open primary” system to “cause mischief” by voting for Haley to thwart the former president’s momentum.

“We’ll see if that materialises today,” he said as he voted at a polling booth a few kilometres from the State House.

Trump began the day giving an hour-plus speech in Washington, DC at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, where he mocked Biden’s mental acuity, talked up his immigration plan to undertake the biggest mass deportation program in history, and described himself as a proud political dissident.

“I’ve been indicted more than Alfonse Capone!” he told the crowd. “I got indicted four times by this gang of thugs for nothing. Or, as I say respectfully to the people from foreign countries, for bullshit.”

He will head to South Carolina later today to attend an election night watch party in Columbia, while Haley’s watch party will be in Charleston.

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