‘We’re one American family,’ Trump says at Charlotte opportunity summit

President Donald Trump, speaking Friday at Charlotte’s Central Piedmont Community College, claimed credit for an economic “renaissance” that he said has especially boosted African Americans and lower-income workers.

“The forgotten men and women of America are no longer forgotten because we are finally putting America first,” Trump told an audience at CPCC’s Halton Theater. “It took a long time, a long time.”

Trump, who a day earlier had celebrated his acquittal by the Senate, didn’t mention his impeachment until five minutes into his address. “It was a failed hoax, so they can put that on their resume,” he said of his Democratic critics.

The president recognized nearly a dozen Republican members of Congress. He acknowledged Sen. Thom Tillis, who voted for acquittal, “as a great friend except for a couple of minor disagreements. Of course, I won’t put up with it for long, Thom Tillis.”

In a nearly hour-long speech that was equal parts campaign rally and policy address, Trump said 220,000 jobs had been created in North Carolina since he took office.

The president credited himself for creating “the most successful economy in the history of the country and (Democrats) want to take it away. It’s not going to happen.”

Trump also made the economic claim at Tuesday’s State of the Union address, but the Washington Post cited experts who said it isn’t true. The unemployment rate was lower in 1953 and the nation’s annual growth rate was higher in 1997 through 1999, and in the 1950s and 1960s, the Post reported.

The half-day summit at CPCC featured workshops on inmate re-entry into society, economic development for low-income areas, infrastructure, and the future of historically black colleges and universities. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Small Business Administration Administrator Jovita Carranza also appeared.

A focal point of the summit was the Trump administration’s tax incentives for investors in blighted areas, known as “opportunity zones.” Trump invited onstage Tony Rankins, a formerly homeless veteran from Cincinnati who struggled with addiction but now works for a construction company in one of the nearly 9,000 zones that have been created.

“Tremendous amounts of money are being put into areas that haven’t seen money for decades and decades,” Trump said. “The money is pouring in.”

Seventeen Charlotte neighborhoods have qualified for the designation, which gives preferential tax treatment for investment in them. But community leaders say the opportunity zones could accelerate gentrification in areas that are already seeing new development and rising property values.

In a statement, Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat who represents Charlotte in North Carolina’s 12th District, called Trump a “gentrifier-in-chief.”

”Instead, President Trump focused on a plan to make the rich richer at the expense of our neighborhoods. ... Under his law, investors can build luxury apartments in some Charlotte neighborhoods, raising the price of housing, and get a tax break for it.”

White House officials have said the zones are unfairly maligned because gentrification was well underway before they were created.

Trump portrayed his administration as a champion of African Americans and other minority groups, pointing to rising employment and the 225,000 U.S. jobs that were created in January.

Black voters “have been with the Democrats for 100 years and they treat you badly, and they only come around before an election, and then they say ‘bye-bye,’ and they’re gone,” Trump said. “All these bad numbers, what the hell do you have to lose?”

He gave a shout-out to black churches and said wages for African Americans had risen $2,400 a year under his administration. He touted the 2018 law changing federal sentencing laws. And he said he’d won regular funding for HBCUs.

Trump got 18% of the non-white vote in 2016, exit polls showed.

Trump derided previous administrations for bad trade deals that he said gutted factories and shipped jobs overseas and for social policies that he said left high crime rates and cities in disrepair. He spoke of the “crushing burdens” his predecessors imposed on working class Americans.

He said his administration had worked to increase funding for historically-black universities, help former prisoners reenter society and reform the criminal justice system. Trump brought onstage Georgia pastor Tony Lowden, who he announced this week as executive director of a White House council on prisoner re-entry.

“We’re one American family,” Trump said. “We rise together, we fight together and we win together.”

In a January poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, released Friday, 57% of Americans called economic conditions good or excellent. But while 64% of whites felt that way, only 33% of blacks did. Older and higher-income respondents expressed the most optimism, younger and poorer ones the least.

A small crowd of flag-waving Trump supporters and protesters gathered at CPCC ahead of the president’s arrival.

“Trump is guilty! Trump is guilty!” one group chanted.

“Four more years! Four more years!” supporters responded.

“We want to show Trump that we still support him after that impeachment fiasco,” Carrie Barker said, adding that she can’t wait until he returns for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte in August.

CPCC student Savanna Shrader, 22, said Trump’s visit hits especially close to home since she’s from Charlotte.

“I want him to know he’s not welcome here — he never will be,” she said.

The Charlotte event follows a tumultuous week in which the president delivered his annual State of the Union address, exulted over the Democrats’ Iowa caucus implosion and was acquitted Wednesday on articles of impeachment on abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Trump insisted he had been attacked “by some very dishonest and corrupt people.” Later in the day, he declared that his family “went through hell, unfairly,” attacking by name the Democrats responsible for his impeachment and praising the Senate Republicans who voted to acquit him.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, did not attend Trump’s visit and took Friday off as a personal day, a city spokesman said. Democratic City Council members told the Observer they too wouldn’t be there.

“I just don’t have any faith or confidence in this administration,” said council member Malcom Graham. “And I don’t want to be a part of a stage production.”

Staff writer Alison Kuznitz contributed.

This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 5:30 AM.