Trump suggests black voters like him more because of his mugshot and criminal indictments: 'What's happening to me happens to them'

Former President Donald Trump floated Friday night that black voters like him more now that he's posed for a mugshot and been criminally indicted 91 times. 

Trump was headlining the Black Conservative Federation's Honors Gala in Columbia, South Carolina, on the eve of the state's Republican primary. 

The ex-president and 2024 hopeful has been averaging about a 30-point lead over former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and received the endorsement of the state's black Sen. Tim Scott last month. 

'When I did the mug shot in Atlanta, that mug shot is No. 1. You know who embraced it more than anyone else?' Trump asked the crowd. 'The black population.' 

He complained that he got indicted for 'nothing' - claiming that's something black voters understand because they see 'what's happening to me happens to them.'

Former President Donald Trump floated Friday night that black voters like him more now that he's posed for a mugshot and been criminally indicted 91 times as he headlined the Black Conservative Federation Gala in Columbia, South Carolina 

Trump's mugshot from Fulton County, Georgia. He said the 'black population' embraced it more than any other group

'Does that make sense?' Trump asked. 

He earned cheers and applause from the crowd. 

'And a lot of people said that's why the black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against,' Trump said. 

'It's been pretty amazing but possibly, maybe, there's something there,' the former president added.

At the event Trump also quipped, 'These lights are so bright in my eyes that I can't see too many people out there. But I can only see the black ones. I can't see any white ones.' 

'You see that's how far I've come. That's how far I've come,' he added.  

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called former President Donald Trump 'disgusting' after he said that black voters like him more now that he's posed for a mugshot and been criminally indicted 91 times

Rival Nikki Haley told reporters she found Trump's comments 'disgusting' as she left her polling place on Kiawah Island, South Carolina Saturday after casting her ballot alongside her family in the GOP primary.

'But that's what happens when he goes off the teleprompter, that's the chaos that comes with Donald Trump, that's the offensiveness that's going to happen every day between now and the general election,' Haley said. 'Which is why I continue to say Donald Trump cannot win a general election. He won't.'

'We can make him the primary nominee if we want to but Republicans will lose come November, this is a huge warning sign,' Trump's final rival added.  

The Biden campaign took issue not specifically with these comments, but with Trump's decision to address the predominantly black crowd at all.

'The audacity of Trump to speak to a room full of Black voters during Black History Month as if he isn't the proud poster boy for modern racism,' the Biden campaign's Black Media Director Jasmine Harris said in a statement Saturday.

'This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park 5, questioned George Floyd's humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black workers spiked during his presidency,' she continued.

'Donald Trump has been showing Black Americans his true colors for years: An incompetent, anti-Black tyrant who holds us to such low regard that he publicly dined with white nationalists a week after declaring his 2024 candidacy,' Harris added. 

Trump launched his 2024 presidential bid on November 15, 2022. 

Days later, he sat down for a controversial dinner at Mar-a-Lago with rapper Kanye West, who is black but was under fire for making anti-Semitic remarks, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. 

'Come November, no matter how many disengenuous voter engagement events he attends, Black Americans will show Donald Trump we know exactly who he is,' Harris said. 

Trump is hoping to strip away some of the support President Joe Biden had in 2020 with black and Latino voters. 

Biden won about 90 percent of the black vote in 2020. 

While high, that's a decrease from the support black voters gave to Hillary Clinton, Trump's rival in 2016, which was at 93 percent. 

President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, received 97 percent of the vote during his reelection bid in 2012.