Trump has done more for black Americans since Lincoln, black pastors say
The Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. believes President Donald Trump is the greatest president for African Americans since President Abraham Lincoln.
“There’s no question,” Childress said in an interview with The Christian Post. “He may be better for African Americans than Lincoln. Lincoln had a lot of political interest in what he did.”
Childress has pastored the New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, since 1989. He also leads America’s largest African American pro-life website, the Life Education and Research Network.
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While Trump’s crass behavior, bullying and verbal bellicosity bother him, the policy changes his administration has made in the last four years have freed African Americans to succeed in new ways, he said.
Among the benefits Trump offers African Americans are new jobs, prison reform, school choice, university funding, and a strong pro-life policy, Childress said.
In the last four years, African American unemployment reached a record low. The Trump administration also enacted prison reform that released thousands, argued for Congress to pass a law giving 1 million children their choice of school, signed a bill restoring money to historically black colleges and universities, and fought to protect unborn babies who feel pain when aborted.
These policies make the lives of African Americans better, and they’re all because of Trump, Childress said. But the policy that does most for African Americans is Trump’s pro-life stance.
"The health of African American women has declined due to miscarriages and aggressive cancer that is linked to abortion,” Childress stressed, noting that African American women have the nation’s highest abortion rates, as well as the nation’s highest miscarriage rates. The two are related, Childress said.
“We were once having our children in the field. Now we’re leading the country in miscarriage because of uteruses that have been compromised by abortion,” he said.
Childress traces the roots of African American abortion rates to the Democratic Party and racist Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. He said the many abortion clinics in African American communities today are part of a plan to kill African Americans faster than they can be born.
Another issue where some African Americans differ from the Democratic Party is on same-sex marriage, said Pastor Johnny Hunter in an interview with CP. Hunter leads Cliffdale Community Church in North Carolina. The Equality Act, which would force churches to hire people who don't have Christian beliefs on sexual morality, threatens African American churches.
"No black pastor wants to marry two men. No black pastor wants to marry two women. But with [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi passing that law, she put a little stipulation that said churches can’t challenge it," Hunter explained.
Hunter said he changed his mind on Trump when he saw how much the president helped African Americans. When he saw that the president was better than he expected on policy, and the media was more biased against the president than he had originally thought, he started to favor Trump.
"I used to be a Democrat," Hunter said. "I quit the party over the abortion issue. I was a teacher. Teachers protect children. I then got even more involved with the pro-life movement." He is now politically unaffiliated and has supported pro-life candidates in both major parties.
Hunter quoted Luke 16:8 about Trump. The verse reads, "And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
African Americans also need school choice to succeed, Childress said. In many majority African American school districts, money that should go to students gets swallowed by political corruption. When students can attend quality schools of their choice, they get control of their own education and success, Childress added. Trump has supported policies that help them do so.
“Right here in New Jersey’s Camden High school, 85% of the graduating high school class could not pass an eighth-grade reading class,” he said. “We need to allow the money to follow the child.”
Chidress said that because of policies like these, African Americans will vote for Trump in surprising numbers. He said the black vote for Trump might be as high as 38%.
“In my different travels, I feel I’m picking up a new beat. There’s going to be a very high African American vote percentage-wise for Donald Trump,” he said.
In 2016, Trump won the presidency with only 8% of the black vote. Since then, the president’s polls have often shown he struggles to win the minds of African Americans.
Right now, some of the poll results seem to conflict. In one poll from The Washington Post, eight in 10 African Americans say Trump is “a racist.” Another poll from Rasmussen suggests Trump has a 40% approval rating among African Americans.
“In my lifetime, there’s been no president who’s done more for the African American community when both parties don’t like you,” Childress said.
