Rappers Back Trump as Policy Shocks Mount for Black Americans

17 rappers – A lengthy essay by Konch publisher Ishmael Reed argues that 17 pro-Trump rappers have made what he calls a historic mistake—especially as he describes a cascade of Trump administration decisions that he says have harmed Black Americans and other marginalized c

Milwaukee was full of movement and noise in July 2024, but the debate Reed is trying to reopen follows a different path: who gets to speak for Black voters, and what those endorsements mean when Washington turns policy into consequence.

Reed points to “MAGA rap” artist Kurt Jantz—professionally known as Forgiato Blow—who attended the third day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 17, 2024.

From there, Reed frames his central charge. The “17 rappers” he refers to are presented as having persuaded their millions of fans to vote for Trump. and Reed calls that endorsement the “biggest blunder in Black history.” He asks a question that hangs over the whole argument: do the rappers who backed Trump feel betrayed enough to demand a reckoning with the president—something he compares to the stand Boston Guardian publisher William Monroe Trotter took with Woodrow Wilson.

Trotter. who earned his graduate and postgraduate degrees at Harvard University. was the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. In 1912, Trotter endorsed Woodrow Wilson for president, but felt betrayed when Wilson segregated federal employees. In a historic meeting at the White House on November 12. 1914. Trotter told Wilson that “Black and white Federal employees had been integrated for over thirty-five years without calamity (even as they shared bathrooms and lunchrooms and breathing space).” Wilson accused Trotter of impudence. One version of what followed says Wilson ordered Trotter out of the White House. After that encounter. Reed writes. Trotter became a hero to Black Americans and received sustained applause when he appeared before Black audiences.

Reed argues that Trump’s record now offers a sharper contrast between loyalty and harm—especially in policy decisions that, in his telling, strike directly at Black life.

He says the “media” highlighted Africans suffering from the discontinuation of USAID. while he argues that ending USAID by Elon Musk was a catastrophe for 135 countries. and he estimates that 14 million will die because of these cuts. Reed adds that a program devoted to reducing HIV cases in Africa was ended. and that it was ended on Juneteenth. He claims Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has criticized the cost-cutting regime enacted under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. and says Gates accused Musk of causing the deaths of the world’s poorest children by cutting U.S. foreign aid for health initiatives, specifically HIV medicine funding. Reed also says chaos in the supporting agencies has been linked to an Ebola outbreak occurring in Uganda and the Congo. and he writes that it’s spreading.

Reed further connects the dismantling of USAID to starvation in Somalia and says Trump’s “war of choice” has contributed to higher food costs in Africa and elsewhere as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz has halted fertilizer shipments.

On domestic health care, Reed argues the stakes are just as immediate. He says the expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies expired on December 31. 2025. and that without congressional action millions of Americans are seeing their health insurance premiums increase. He also describes “the largest cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in history. ” saying it means 4 million people—many of them children—will lose access to food.

Reed says congressional Republicans eliminated the expiration date for the ACA’s enhanced premium tax subsidies after months of fighting and countless proposals for a bipartisan compromise. He also writes that he believes “thousands will die” because he says they can’t afford the high costs of insurance premiums.

He then turns to immigration enforcement and policing. Reed writes that while Trump promised to deport Hispanic gangs. Hispanic citizens have been caught in the net “as well as Black Americans.” He describes finding a helicopter attack on a Chicago apartment building chilling. and says it involved the removal of naked Black and brown children to the street. Reed adds a comparison to historical slavery-era forced marches. saying that when Confederate soldiers marched Black children from Pennsylvania to the South. the children were fully clothed.

Reed writes that he believes Trump has “unleashed his personal storm troopers on brown and Black citizens. ” and he says Vice President JD Vance has described them as having “immunity.” Reed then raises a fear about escalation: he says the killing of poet Renée Good shows those who are empowered will kill white women too. and he asks whether most white women will continue to vote for people who want to limit reproductive freedom.

The essay also moves to courts and elections. Reed cites a passage attributed to Justin Jouvenal in The Washington Post on April 9: “The sharply conservative Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to reject civil rights claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities.” Reed says that on April 29. the Supreme Court “gutted the Voting Rights Act.” He argues that Trump’s congressional and Supreme Court actions hinder “the advancement of Blacks. women. Hispanics. ” and some Asian American groups he says he sees lined up for free food every weekend.

Reed broadens the argument beyond policy into rhetoric and identity politics. He says Trump insulted prominent Blacks. including referring to a Black journalist as a “bitch.” He says Trump previously called the Black football players who followed Colin Kaepernick’s example of taking the knee “sons of bitches.” Reed claims Trump believes Blacks have low IQs and writes that “proof” of eugenics supporters gaining access to the president is tied to that view. He also alleges Musk belittled the intellectual capacity of Black students.

Reed points to a claim that Science magazine reports the Trump administration deviates from scientific consensus that views race as a social construct. He says the administration sees race as a biological reality.

He includes voting figures tied to Black youth. Reed writes that while 80 percent of Black voters and a majority of union household members supported Kamala Harris. of the 17 rappers who persuaded their millions of fans to vote for Trump. Harris received 12 percent fewer votes from young Blacks than Biden. Reed says that despite “endless hours” of television commentary about a mass defection of Black male voters to Trump. Trump received only 5 percent of the Black male vote.

He names one rapper. “Little Pump. ” and says President Trump misnamed him as “little Pimp.” Reed adds that Little Pump said he’d leave the United States if Kamala Harris were elected. Reed also writes about pro-Trump remarks by Kanye West and Snoop Dogg—saying Snoop Dogg told the public he had “nothing but love for Trump.”.

The essay ties these endorsements to jobs and the politics of women. Reed claims 300. 000 Black women have lost their jobs because of Elon Musk’s “antics.” He returns to the campaign trail and says Trump won election by depicting Kamala as a slut in one of “the vilest campaigns” against a presidential candidate in history. with Reed saying the possible exception was the 1828 campaign when Andrew Jackson supporters referred to John Adams as a “pimp.” He writes that Trump’s “lurid campaign” appealed to “the puerile minds of the manosphere. ” and he says Trump did the same to Hillary.

Reed also writes that during the campaign Vance called Vice President Harris “trash,” and he says media—including “her white-media sisters”—ignored crass, racist, and sexist attacks on Harris.

The essay argues Democrats missed opportunities because they didn’t want to alienate people. Reed says white male pundits who posed as Hispanic whisperers gave high prices as a reason Hispanic men voted for Trump. while Reed says Hispanic men on a San Francisco talk show moderated by a Hispanic man said they didn’t want a woman running things.

Reed then pivots to the party’s embrace of far-right figures. He says the ambitious vice president welcomed Nick Fuentes into the “big-tent Republican Party,” and that Fuentes said he wants the party to nominate a real Nazi in 2028.

Reed challenges the mainstream framing of why voters chose Trump. He says networks adopted the line that millions voted for Trump for economic reasons, and that one study he references says it was because Trump “shared their prejudices.”

The argument also connects Trump-era justice policies to race. Reed asks how these rappers would respond to Trump’s advocating immunity for police actions and his pardoning of insurrectionists who assaulted Black guards with the N-word and displayed the Confederate flag at the White House—something he says Robert E. Lee failed to accomplish. Reed says some of the pardoned men mocked Auschwitz and that Trump also pardoned those men. Reed then claims Trump wants to reward insurrectionists with reparations amounting to nearly $1.8 billion.

He brings antisemitism and federal agencies into the same frame. Reed writes that the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly criticized Trump for antisemitic remarks and that Reed says Trump retweets Nazi posts. He adds that Reed asks how the rappers would respond to the FBI director cutting ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. Reed says that “Late last year. ” FBI director Kash Patel announced the bureau was severing its ties with the SPL. calling it a “partisan smear machine” because of its use of a “hate map” displaying what it described as anti-government and hate groups. Reed says Patel also cut the FBI’s ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights antisemitism.

Health care and family separation are brought in again through the person Reed identifies as head of Health and Human Services. Reed says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed that Black children should be removed from their families and “re-parented. ” tying that to the message of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Reed then broadens to education, civil rights, and segregation. He writes that the Roberts Supreme Court wants to return to the 19th century by eliminating Black representation in the South. and asks whether there will be a return to segregated lunch counters. He says the Trump administration removed the ban on “segregated facilities” in federal contracts.

To underline what he sees as the enduring logic of racial domination, Reed quotes Thomas Dixon (The Clansman). He includes Dixon’s words about the election and violence against Black voting: “The next two weeks and this election will decide whether white civilization shall live or a permanent negroid mongrel government. after the pattern of Haiti and San Domingo. shall be established. If we submit, we are not worth saving. We ought to die and our civilization with us!. We are not going to submit, we are not going to die, we are going to win.”.

Reed contrasts this with a line he attributes to JFK. He says when JFK was shot. he was on his way to the Texas mart to deliver a speech emphasizing learning and reason. Reed quotes JFK: “America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.”.

Reed returns to the present and says the most ignorant president since Andrew Jackson wants to eliminate Black Studies when he doesn’t even have White Studies nailed. He asks again why rappers who see themselves as the “avant-garde” would support such a regime.

The final turn is about media influence and celebrity. Reed says the media elevated rappers over traditional civil rights leaders. and that “they and the corporations gave us P’Diddy as a role model.” Reed adds that The New York Times “just about named P’Diddy the entrepreneur of the year” and says he can still be found doing Pepsi commercials on YouTube.

Reed names MSNBC’s Ari Melber. saying Melber believes every trite line penned by a rapper is profound and asked Mayor Mamdani questions posed to him by a Trump supporter. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. who fronts for the Starz network that refashions stereotypes about Blacks cast over the last 200 years. Reed says Melber isn’t the first member of Manhattan’s cognoscenti to embrace thugs. and he compares to Joey Gallo in the 1960s.

Reed closes by calling the pro-Trump endorsements “the biggest blunder by a Black group in Black history” and bringing the question back to the Trotter moment: do rappers feel betrayed enough to request a meeting with the president. as Trotter did with Wilson. to remind him that they “delivered votes” and are “outraged” by his policies?. Reed ends by asking who would be the Monroe Trotter of 2026—Snoop Dogg or 50 Cent.

The essay leaves readers with a single sharp tension: in a political moment defined by hard policy outcomes, does cultural influence translate into accountability—or into acquiescence?

United States politics Donald Trump JD Vance USAID Affordable Care Act Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Voting Rights Act Supreme Court Elon Musk Kurt Jantz Forgiato Blow Monroe Trotter Kamala Harris Snoop Dogg Kanye West Little Pump