Trump once told Black leaders he had a 'good' relationship with Obama: 'I said he did a great job on 60 Minutes'
While US President Donald Trump might continue to bash his predecessor Barack Obama, he claimed a 'very good' relationship in 2016. Trump told this to a group of civil rights leaders while discusiing the presidential elections with them. The POTUS's statements, originally drawn from an audio recording obtained by the outlet Politico, sees him leaving the meeting room at Trump Tower, to accept a phone call. When he returned to the meeting he allegedly told those in attendance that "off the record, that was your friend Barack (Obama). We actually have a very good relationship. I said he did a great job last night on 60 Minutes, and, uh, we actually have a very good relationship."
The outlet adds that the meeting attended by Martin Luther King III, John Mack, William Wachtel, Scott Rechler, and James Forbes, also saws Trump hailing how several people from the Black community did not vote in 2016.
"Many Blacks didn't go out to vote for Hillary because they liked me," Trump told civil rights leaders about his opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton, adding "That was almost as good as getting the vote, you know, and it was great." Trump had also made sure to address how he has “so many” Black friends who “are so incredible, and everyone knows that.”
It's worth noting that based on 2016 data by Edison Research, Clinton ended up receiving 88 percent of the Black vote, as opposed to the 8 percent Trump garnered. Three years later, in 2019, the Trump campaign tried to pull Black voters via their Black Voices for Trump initiative, and the same year during a press conference in June, Trump told reporters that he had "done more for Black Americans than anybody, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. Nobody has even been close."
Now, a year later, as the US grapples how best to organize a safe voting system amidst a full-blown pandemic, Trump continues to vehemently criticize Obama. "President Obama did not do a good job and the reason I'm here is because of President Obama and Joe Biden," Trump said during a news conference on Wednesday. "Because if they did a good job, I wouldn't be here. And probably if they did a good job, I wouldn't have even run. I'd have been very happy. I enjoyed my previous life very much. But they did such a bad job that I stand before you as president." In the past, Trump has also actively slammed the way Obama handled 2014's Ebola outbreak, and also called Obama's presidency invalid as he wasn't born in the United States.
The former president however continues campaigning for his ex-VP. Expressing his support of Biden's presidential campaign at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Obama said Trump had "no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves."