Inside The Gangsta Image of The Don Trump
 |
| Former President Donald J. Trump has played up a macho invincibility in his messaging, railing against his felony convictions and casting himself as an outlaw.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times |
By Jennifer Medina
The New York Times
Amber Rose, an OnlyFans model, influencer, and former girlfriend to rappers, took the stage at the Republican National Convention on Monday night sporting her platinum buzz cut and face tattoo.
Ms. Rose, the author of a book titled “How to Be a Bad Bitch,” told the overwhelmingly white crowd that she once believed “left-wing propaganda that Donald Trump was a racist.” But now, she said, she had “put the red hat on, too.”
“These are my people,” she said. “This is where I belong.”
As if to underscore the point, Ms. Rose appeared on the giant screens at the convention hall again the next night. This time it was in a music video for “Trump Trump Baby,” a remix of Vanilla Ice’s 1990s hit, “Ice Ice Baby,” performed by Forgiato Blow, a self-described MAGA rapper. Ms. Rose wore a hefty gold chain with a medallion of Mr. Trump’s face.
At the four-day Trump party last week, Ms. Rose was the embodiment of an increasingly public, and some say offensive, Trump campaign strategy: using hip-hop and rap to sell Mr. Trump to Black and Latino voters.
Mr. Trump and his allies have steadily adopted street slang, music, and style, selling $400 golden sneakers, blasting hip-hop at rallies, inviting conservative artists to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club, and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and even welcoming rappers accused of murder onstage at a rally.
He has played up macho invincibility and swagger in his messaging, railing against his felony convictions and casting himself as an outlaw. After Mr. Trump was booked at an Atlanta jail last year, his campaign spokesman posted a video of the former president’s motorcade on X, with the message: “gang bitches.”
Surviving the assassination attempt this month has fueled the effort. In the hours after Mr. Trump was shot in the ear at a rally, the rapper 50 Cent posted an image of his “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” album cover with Mr. Trump’s head superimposed on his body.
DJ Akademiks, a rap commentator, watched a video of the shooting as he recorded his talk show on Rumble, reacting with glee when a bloodied Mr. Trump pumped his fist in the air.
“Trump gangster,” he said.
It all taps into a well of distrust — of both the justice system and the Democratic establishment — shared by many young men of color. And there are signs, in polling and public endorsements from figures like Ms. Rose, that it is having an impact.
Bakari Kitwana, who has chronicled hip-hop and politics for decades, called the Trump campaign’s efforts an “insidious play on racial stereotypes.”
“It severely underestimates the Black community, but it also shows that neither Democrats nor Republicans have seriously appealed to the hip-hop community,” he said. “Instead, they want to get people up there with him and get the people who are their fans, but it’s not any kind of substantive conversation.”
Yet Mr. Trump is seeking to exploit a real political shift. Polling suggests that Black voters and Latino voters are supporting his campaign at levels once considered out of reach for Republicans. Young Latino and Black men are some of those most unhappy with President Biden’s candidacy, a factor for many Democrats pushing to get him out of the race.
Mr. Trump has remained broadly unpopular with Black voters, and much of the new support is coming from people who are not paying close attention to politics. But even micro-movements in his direction can have an impact in a close race. The Trump campaign believes its outreach to influencers and celebrities is more effective than traditional door-knocking. “This is a totally different election and a different campaign,” said Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the campaign.
Few political observers believe that TikTok videos from rappers are directly driving Mr. Trump’s apparent bump among Black and Latino voters. But they do think the endorsements matter: Supporting Mr. Trump is becoming “normalized and acceptable” in communities where it was once taboo, said Kevin Powell, a civil rights activist and hip-hop historian.
Donald Trump stands next to Sleepy Hallow at a lectern.
“In 2024, there is no mass movement happening like there was in 2020,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s stock has risen most in the corners that have long celebrated outlaws — artists who rap about criminal exploits and celebrate people who survive and thrive outside a legal system that is often hostile to young Black and Latino people. Talking about voting for a former president recently convicted of 34 felonies — and rejecting a Democratic president — has become one more way to give the system the middle finger.
Democrats have not done anything for Black voters, Money Man, an Atlanta rapper, said this year on a podcast. “At least the other side, they’re going to tell you how they feel, you know what I’m saying? Shout out to Trump, man.”
The statements have hit a nerve. Democrats say it is all evidence of short-term memory and misplaced anger. Lost from the conversation, they note, is Mr. Trump’s record of reinforcing racial stereotypes: He took out an advertisement in 1989 that called for the death penalty after a group of Latino and Black teenagers were accused of raping a jogger in Central Park. The teenagers, known as the Central Park Five, were later wrongly convicted.
Trump’s conviction and Biden’s poor debate sent big money into the race.
A week after the shooting, Trump leaves unity behind and returns to insults and election denial.
As Biden recovers from Covid, Harris assumes a starring role on the campaign trail.
He described inner-city neighborhoods as “war zones” in 2016 and seemed to condone a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. When Black Lives Matter protests broke out across the country in 2020, he called the protesters “terrorists” and “thugs,” and their rallying cry a “symbol of hate.”
Mr. Trump has long had a connection to hip-hop. In the 1990s, his name was a byword for flashy wealth. (A Tribe Called Quest in 1991: “Beeper’s going off like Don Trump gets checks”; Master P in 1994: “Put more cash in my pockets than Donald Trump”; Ice Cube in 1998: “I’m just tryin’ to get rich like Trump.”)
In 2016, when Kanye West made a pilgrimage to Trump Tower shortly after the election, he was viewed as an outlier.
Today, he would be part of a trend. Lil Pump, a rapper from Miami, declared Mr. Trump the “greatest president who ever lived” and had the former president’s mug shot tattooed on his thigh.
Snoop Dogg, who in 2020 said he could not “stand to see this punk in office one more year,” has reversed himself.
“I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump,” he told The Sunday Times of London this year, adding, “He ain’t done nothing wrong to me. He has done only great things for me.” He praised the former president for pardoning Michael Harris, a founder of Death Row Records who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
Forgiato Blow, center, and Trump Latinos rapping at the Bronx rally.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Mr. Trump’s pardons for Mr. Harris and several other hip-hop figures are part of the turnabout. Just days before leaving office in 2021, Mr. Trump pardoned Lil Wayne and granted a commutation for Kodak Black, who both faced gun-related convictions.
“Once he started getting Black people out of jail and giving people that free money, aw, baby, we love Trump,” Sexyy Red, a popular rapper, said on a conservative podcast last fall. He is bold and funny, she added. “We need people like him.” (She declined to be interviewed for this article, but later said on X that the comment was not an endorsement.)
Mr. Trump has relished this new image.
Last month, Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, whose real names are Michael Williams and Tegan Chambers, came to Mr. Trump’s side in the Bronx and called to “make America great again.” Both men are charged in a conspiracy that Brooklyn prosecutors say led to 12 shootings, and Mr. Williams also faces two counts of attempted murder. They both pleaded not guilty and are out on bail.
Mr. Trump has also encouraged a stable of rappers who write political lyrics, post videos online, travel to his rallies, and visit Mar-a-Lago. The group includes Forgiato Blow, whose video aired at the Republican National Convention, and a Miami-based duo known as Trump Latinos. (Sample verse: “Made me relate when they hit you with the RICO / Now the whole ’hood is screaming ‘Free Trumpito.’”)
When the two men attended Mr. Trump’s rally in the Bronx, Black and Latino teenage boys huddled around them and posed for pictures, watching them as they appeared to freestyle. One of the duo sported a large MAGA tattoo on his neck, which he flashed frequently. Both men declined
“Trump was a playboy mack daddy, you know, and all that, and guys wanted to be like Trump because he was a millionaire,” said Andres Hernandez, 54, a construction worker from Brooklyn who attended the rally and sounded like a lot of Trump supporters — drawn to Mr. Trump’s cultivated image of the rich entrepreneur.
Former President Barack Obama sounded alarms that Mr. Trump’s appeal could catch on in communities where Democrats have dominated. There is an allure of “wealth, power, frankly, greed,” Mr. Obama said in 2020 after Mr. Trump made gains with both Black and Latino voters in that election.
“If there are some in the hip-hop community who are constantly rapping about bling and depicting women in a certain way, and then they hear Donald Trump basically delivering the same version of it, they might say, ‘Yeah, that guy, that’s what I want. That’s what I want to be.’”
Luke Vander Ploeg and Asthaa Chaturvedi contributed reporting.
Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change. More about Jennifer Medina
Comments