In an interview with the Daily Beast, a black voter who cast his vote for Barack Obama twice to be president admitted that he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and would have no problem voting for him again despite the fact that he knows the president is a racist.
Speaking with the Beast's David Dent, 40-year-old Desmond Grant, who owns a trucking company that has thrived during the Trump years, bluntly admitted that he knows exactlty what the president is when it comes to matters of race.
"Well, I mean I work here with a lot of racist people,” the Houston resident explained. “That’s America. You can’t help it, they’re everywhere. And you know, as long as they don’t disrespect me in my face, they ain’t gonna have no problems. But when we leave here, they can go raising the KKKs and do whatever they wanna do. But as long as we’re on the job, we’re gonna respect each other.”
According to Dent, "That outlook doesn’t account for what could happen on a job through a racist coworker’s neighborhood, but Grant says that the climate for small businesses matters more to him than what lives in the president’s heart and mind on race and that his trucking company has thrived in the Trump era. The president, he says, presents an aura of strength that’s more important than the shortcomings his critics focus on."
Grant also admitted that he doesn't think the president is particularly smart, but he does admire him as a businessman.
“He does know how to make money,” says Grant. “He’s not an honest man and he’s not too bright, but he don’t give a fuck. You know what I’m saying? He’s not the most well-spoken but he stands his ground—and that’s part of being a man. He can do that very well.”
Grant's cousin Reginald, a Houston teacher, also admitted that he voted for Trump in 2016, saying he thought former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was "evil." but now has had a change of heart about the president after three and a half years.
“So I kept saying, maybe when he gets to office, he’ll become more of what you think of when you hear the term presidential. I don’t see any type of evolution to him or change in that regard,” he explained, adding that president’s “racist response” to the black NFL player protests and the president's bumbled coronavirus response was a tipping point for him.
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