Senior U.S. Democratic Party member Clyburn says, “Black voters should not be fooled by Trump again.”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Go Il-hwan = Representative Jim Clyburn (South Carolina), a senior black politician in the Democratic Party of the United States, warned black voters ahead of the midterm elections that they should not be fooled twice by President Donald Trump.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) on the 6th (local time), Representative Clyburn said, "If you fool me once, it's your fault, but if you fool me twice, it's my fault."

He said that the turnout of black voters in the 2024 presidential election was 59%, far below the 71% of white voters, and that "we were probably responsible for the failure as well."

He argued that the Democratic Party must focus on the cost of living issue in order to re-attract black voters who did not vote in the last presidential election.

Black voters traditionally have a strong tendency to support the Democratic Party, but support for President Trump has noticeably increased in the 2024 presidential election.

According to the Pew Research Center, black voters' support for President Trump increased from 8% in 2020 to 15% in 2024.

Rep. Clyburn, 86, is a civil rights activist from the 1960s.

He said that President Trump's policies are once again highlighting racial conflict in American society, and defined 'Project 2025', a national policy initiative of the conservative Heritage Foundation, as 'Jim Crow 2.0'.

Jim Crow refers to the laws and practices that institutionalized segregation of blacks and whites and restrictions on suffrage for blacks in the American South.

Rep. Clyburn also claimed that the Republican-dominated southern state legislatures were “trying to weaken the influence of black voters” in relation to their movement to redistrict districts.

Previously, in May, the Tennessee State Assembly passed a plan to divide Memphis and its surrounding areas, which have a high proportion of black people, into three federal House of Representatives districts with a majority of white people.

Rep. Clyburn is running for an 18th term in the November midterm elections, despite calls for a generational change from some in the party.