Dwayne Talbot called President-elect Donald J. Trump “a racist” just two days after voting for him.
“Trump is a winner. I picked the winner,” said Talbot, a 40-year-old insurance salesman in Brooklyn who happens to be Black.
Talbot added that viewing Trump as “a racist” did not play a role in voting for him.
“He don’t like Black people. This is his choice. I’m not vexed with him for not liking Black people,” Talbot said, adding that issues like healthcare and immigration are more salient for him.
Trump won the 2024 election in a landslide with 312 electoral college votes, which is far beyond the 270 threshold to win. He also won the popular vote thanks to about 77 million people casting a ballot for him, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years.
The 78-year-old businessman-turned-president maintained the same amount of votes among Black men this time around as he did for his unsuccessful 2020 run. About one in five Black men in 10 key states voted for him, according to exit polling conducted by NBC News. The voting block jumps to about 30% for Trump for Black men under the age of 45, according to the Associated Press. In 2020, about one in five Black men supported him, according to NBC News.
The cornerstone of Trump’s campaign was primarily immigration and his plan to execute nationwide deportations on undocumented people. Trump has also vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a promise from his 2016 campaign that remains largely unfulfilled. Trump has not detailed how he will execute mass deportations, but he told NBC News after his victory that “there is no price tag” for the plan.
There are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2022, according to Pew Research Center. Talbot, who is Guyanaian, was one of them before securing his green card. Still, Talbot supports Trump’s immigration policies.
“He will help us with the immigrants coming over the border,” Talbot said.
In addition to immigration and backing a winner, Talbot said he supported Trump for a few different reasons.
“They wouldn’t allow a woman to be president, a African woman, Black woman, to be president of America,” Talbot said when asked why he didn’t vote for defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Talbot also said he thinks Trump surviving two assassination attempts got him more votes and popularity.
The first attempt was during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet fired from a rifle. The second was Sept. 15 in West Palm Beach, Fla. Trump was not harmed in this incident.
But above all, Talbot said he bought into Trump’s campaign slogan.
“He’s going to take back America,” he said. “America’s going to be great again.”
Talbot said these reasons for supporting Trump overshadow the issue of race that he knows the president-elect presents.
“When Obama was running for president, he was the African president. He was a Black man, so there was a time when Blacks had the benefit of the doubt. That was Black people’s time. This time, it’s white supremacy” Talbot said.
