Trump Says His Indictments Are Helping Him Attract Black Voters

Former President Donald J. Trump, in a speech to a Black conservative group on Friday night, said he believed that the four criminal cases he is facing have earned him support from Black voters because they saw the historic unfairness of the justice system reflected in his legal woes.

“I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now,” Mr. Trump said at a gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation in Columbia, S.C. “Because they see what’s happening to me happens to them. Does that make sense?”

At another point in his speech, he suggested that Black voters had warmed to him “because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as, I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing.”

Mr. Trump has long used “law and order” to rally his conservative base, as well as coded racist language to attack political opponents. His comments on Friday came in a speech filled with express overtures to Black voters, a group that has overwhelmingly voted Democratic for decades, but whose support he and his campaign are eager to win.

As the former president has shifted his focus from the Republican primary, where he is the dominant front-runner, to the general election, he has increasingly included mentions of Black voters in his speeches.

Typically, Mr. Trump claims that Black Americans fared better economically under his administration than under President Biden’s. He has also asserted that the influx of migrants at the southern border is disproportionately hurting Black workers, who face the threat of losing their jobs to immigrants willing to work for lower wages.