BET Founder and Lifelong Democrat: No Candidates Can Beat Trump in 2020
Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson said that as it currently stands, none of the Democratic presidential candidates are capable of defeating President Donald Trump.
“Being a long-time Democrat and still am, I do not see anybody in the Democratic primary races today that is enough in the center where I believe most of the voters are,” Johnson said in a CNBC interview that aired Friday.
“I don’t think it’s there yet, nor do I think right now today, take a snapshot today, I don’t think that group is capable of beating Donald Trump, despite what the polls say,” he added.
The RealClearPolitics average shows the top four polling Democrats in the field all ahead of Trump by single digits, with former Vice President Joe Biden the highest at 9.9 percent.
Trump was behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton going into the 2016 election in the RealClearPolitics average by just over 3 percent. However, of course, the state by state tally is what determines the winner, which Trump carried with a 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.
Johnson suggested that the lack of a strong centrist Democratic candidate may hurt the party’s nominee with African-American voters, who won’t be as motivated to get out and support whoever prevails in the current field to challenge Trump next November.
Johnson, the current chairman of RLJ Companies, was asked if he stood by his assessment, which made headlines last summer, that Trump gets an “A+” in his handling of the U.S. economy.
“I still stand by that position,” Johnson said. “When you look at the economy overall, and you look at consumer confidence, you look at job growth, you look at unemployment for African-Americans and women, and you look at wages beginning to show some movement upward, I still stand by the position absolutely.”
The nation’s first African-American billionaire further contended that the 2020 election is Trump’s to lose.
“I think the president has always been in a position where it’s his to lose based on his bringing a sort of disruptive force into what would be called political norms,” Johnson said.
“I don’t care if it’s the way he conducts foreign policy, the way he takes on the government agencies and deals with immigration, he brings his style.”
CNBC host Hadley Gamble asked if Johnson’s high marks for Trump meant he was going to vote for the president.
“No, that means I’m going to speak my mind, and speak in an independent way and based on the facts,” Johnson said.
The business leader elaborated that he will not allow himself to get caught up in the “zero-sum” game that Democratic politicians play — if Trump is for it, they’re against it.
Some recent polling suggests that Trump’s approval rating among African-American voters has increased substantially.
A Rasmussen poll found Trump at 34 percent approval, while an Emerson survey also found 34.5 percent approval.
ICYMI: Last Friday we showed Black Likely Voter approval for @realDonaldTrump at 34%.
We then found out that a recent widely quoted @EmersonPolling Registered Voters based poll showed Black Voter approval for @POTUS at 34.5%. https://t.co/SS9K9WS4Ix
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) November 25, 2019
Exit polling in 2016 found that just 8 percent of African-American voters chose Trump at the ballot box.
If the president were to garner somewhere in the mid-thirties among black voters, it would be the highest support for a Republican presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1956 race.
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