Black Republicans court new Trump supporters with 'cigars and cognac' series and an eight-figure plan to capitalize on voters fed up with Biden

The Trump campaign is tapping Congress' few black Republicans to capitalize on a  growing shift in polling with African American voters away from Democrats. 

While Joe Biden still has a commanding lead with black voters, Trump has nearly doubled his black support from 2020 to 2024, according to a recent CNN poll. 

Trump's support among black voters surged to 22 percent compared to 2020, when the 45th president only had the support of 9 percent of the demographic. Biden, on the other hand, saw his 81 percent of black voter support in 2020 dip to 69 percent.

Black Republicans, particularly those who seem to be auditioning for a potential VP spot on the ticket with Trump, are heading on the campaign trail to raise funds and court support for the former president. 

As part of a 'Black Americans for Trump' initiative, the campaign opened an office in Philadelphia on Tuesday and brought in Reps. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, and Byron Donalds, R-Pa., to court black voters over cigars and cognac.

The duo is eyeing up Atlanta, Ga. for their next black voter outreach event, a spokesperson for Hunt told DailyMail.com. 

'To win a fight you have to go where the fish are,' Hunt said outside the northeast Philadelphia office opening. 'We're going bravely where no Republicans have gone in decades, and we're going directly to the community.'

'The reason why the Democrats have a hold on the Black community is because our parents' parents' parents keep telling us, 'You gotta vote Democrat,' Hunt said. 'It is up to us in this generation to say, 'Well, why?'

But the Philadelphia Inquirer said the office had been placed in a 65-percent white ward that voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

In a message of optimism Donalds said he is starting to see a 'reinvigoration of black family,' claiming more young black people were forming nuclear family units which is  is 'helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.'

'Black issues are American issues,' Hunt said in another moment. 'We hate what's happening at the border. We don't like being unsafe … and the person who's going to save the country from being on the brink is Donald John Trump.' 

National polling suggests there could be a realignment among nonwhite working-class voters without a college degree, and nonwhite conservatives have been shifting their support to Trump come November. Republicans argue that even small increases can lead to big shifts in the election results.

Hunt, Donalds and Senator Tim Scott make up three of Congress' five black Republicans.   

Scott claimed this week the shift is 'becoming just so blatantly obvious that it's now undeniable.'

'You see a lot of black folks and minorities moving toward the GOP because of the issues of jobs and justice,' Scott said.

The argument is that if Trump increases his margins by another two points among non-college educated voters and his margins among nonwhite voters by three points in 2024, he would win another five additional states and the Electoral College.

The conservative Great Opportunity PAC is seizing on what it sees as an opportunity.

It has a $14 million initial budget for the election with the expectation to raise more. The budget includes more than $9 million for voter contact and more than $4.7 million for earned and paid media.

The plan is to fun a full scale campaign in black communities and communicate directly with black voters to help Trump and Republicans in the House and Senate.

Scott said he also believes the conviction of Trump on 34 felony counts in New York last month will actually be helpful with driving more African Americans to the Republican party.

'There's just so much corrosion in that courtroom and that in my opinion associated with the verdicts that black guys I'm talking to around South Carolina, specifically African American men, are fed up with this tow tiered justice system, so much so that I would suggest that the number today is closer to 50 percent, 45 to 50 percent of African American men who are open,' Scott claimed.

Donalds, meanwhile, went on to say that Black voters had become loyal to Democrats due to their leadership in civil rights movement but Democratic policies went on to erode their family values.  

'You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,' Donalds, R-Fla., had said during an event to reach out to black voters on Tuesday.

Donalds garnered backlash from Democrats for suggesting there was an upside to the Jim Crow era of legal segregation. 

He shot back in a clip on X: 

'[Democrats] are trying to say that I said 'black people were doing better under Jim Crow.' I never said that, they are lying. But why would you be surprised? Because they always lie. This is the same Joe Biden that said, if you don't vote for him, then you ain't black. The man is a liar. Sorry, just call it what it is. What I said was, is that you have more black families under Jim Crow, and it was the policies under H. E. W. under the welfare state, that did help to destroy the black family. That's what I said', he said, referring to the expansion of the welfare system under President Lyndon Johnson. 

Donalds, Hunt and Scott are rumored to be eyeing a spot on the Trump ticket as vice president. 

'And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,' Donalds said, referring to the expansion of the welfare state and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. 

At one point during the event, Donalds and Tafoya discussed the differences between black men and black women's politics, as polls have shown much of Trump's uptick in polling among black voters comes from men. 

'First of all, there's a difference between men and women anyway,' Donalds said. 'Men have been created by god to be conquerors, to be hunters. That's who they are. And so a Black man in today's America is looking around and saying, 'How can I go hunt for my people and hunt for my family?' … They're looking at what Joe Biden has done and saying, 'I can't hunt! You took my spear. You took my bow.'