President Trump and the Congressional Black Caucus

Bianna Golodryga
·Yahoo News and Finance Anchor

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised “a new deal for black America.” He said, “Every African-American citizen in this country is entitled to a government that puts their jobs, wages and security first.” He also had this message: “Look how much African-American communities have suffered under Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?”

Despite that message, Trump got only 8 percent of the African-American vote. On Wednesday he’s trying to improve his standing by inviting the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to the White House. It’s a meeting that seems to have been brokered at a press conference when Trump was questioned by April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks. At the time, Trump asked Ryan, who is African-American, if she would set up the meeting. She did not set it up, but the CBC did.

The members of today’s Congressional Black Caucus are the successors of the “founding 13” members of the House of Representatives who formed the organization in 1971. All were African-Americans and all were Democrats.

Since then, six black senators and four Republicans have joined the caucus, but some conservatives, like South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, have refused.

Other Republicans like Rep. Mia Love of Utah joined in order to shake it up. Love said in 2015, “I’ve always said I wanted to join the Congressional Black Caucus. That’s something that I’ve always said I wanted to do because I don’t think you can effect any change from the outside in.”

But the CBC’s agenda doesn’t even unite its own members. While the organization is technically nonpartisan, its policies tilt to the left, backing universal health care, universal access to higher education and a political action committee that endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

So what will Trump do to woo many of his campaign rival’s most fervent supporters? That’s unclear. For their part, CBC members say they’ll bring up the progress they believe his policies could put at risk.

So regardless of the outcome of the meeting, at least when it comes to the Congressional Black Caucus you can say, “Now I get it.”