Atlanta Black Barbershop owner says he’s lost business since Trump event

The owner of a black Atlanta hair salon said Friday he lost customers after being misled into hosting a campaign event for former President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, a day before Trump debated President Joe Biden on CNN’s stage in Atlanta, representatives for the former president hosted an event, the Black American Business Leader Barbershop Roundtable, at Rocky’s Barbershop that included a surprise phone call from Trump himself.

According to local newspaper 11 Alive, the number of customers flocking to Rocky’s Barbershop has declined since the campaign.

Store owner Rocky Jones told the outlet in an article published Friday: “We received calls on Thursday. We’ve definitely gotten calls, negative reactions, angry people who don’t know me and I have to deal with that. »

Jones said he had “no involvement in politics” and added that he believed the event was meant to be a forum for black-owned small businesses.

“I thought it would be something really private,” he said. “I think about black businesses in Atlanta, small black businesses in Atlanta. And I was like, “Okay, so when are we going to start talking about this?” »

When Trump called into the event, Jones was shocked. “I wondered why the ex-president is calling someone into my hair salon? This has nothing to do with small black businesses,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jones told another local media outlet, Atlanta News First, that he felt “betrayed” by the way the event unfolded. He also claimed that no one mentioned that it would be a political event during the coordination and that he never spoke to a representative of the Trump campaign.

Newsweek reached out to Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung by email for comment.

Trump is working to win the black and Hispanic vote in his 2024 campaign.

A New York Times/A Siena College poll of 1,226 registered voters, conducted between June 20 and 25, found that 30% of Black respondents would vote for Trump and 59% for Biden. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

This poll indicates an improvement for Trump among black voters. In a previous Washington Post/An Ipsos poll of 1,331 non-Hispanic black adults conducted between April 9 and 16 found that 66% said they would probably or definitely vote for Biden, while just 14% said they would support Trump in a hypothetical race that included third-party candidates. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

According to CNN senior reporter Harry Enten, support for Biden among young black voters has declined significantly.

On a show earlier this month, Enten showed polling data that showed Biden’s lead among Black voters under 50 has shrunk over the past four years, from 80 points in 2020 to 37 points in 2024.

Meanwhile, Trump recently sparked backlash after he said migrants, many of whom were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in large numbers, were taking “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans during the debate on Thursday evening.

“The fact is his (Biden’s) big kill on black people is the millions of people he allowed in through the border. They’re taking black jobs now,” Trump said. “They’re taking jobs from black people and they’re taking jobs from Hispanic people. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”

There is no evidence to suggest that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are taking jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. citizens.

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele rebuked Trump’s remarks Saturday on the MSNBC broadcast. The weekendof which he is a co-host: “So what exactly would those jobs be for blacks and Hispanics, I wonder? »

He also criticized Trump’s call to Jones’ barbershop on Wednesday, saying: “You want to talk to black people, you can’t even show up in a (black) barbershop… You call a barbershop and you’re going to talk to us about jobs for black people? Shut up. Why are we even putting up with this foolishness from this idiot?”

Meanwhile, Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said of Trump’s “black jobs” remarks: “There is no such thing as a black job. This mischaracterization is a denial of the ubiquity of black talent. We are doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers, firefighters. The list goes on,” according to the Associated Press.

He continued: “A ‘black job’ is an American job. It is worrying that a presidential candidate would seek to make a distinction that does not exist. But the divisive nature of this comment is not surprising to Donald Trump. »

Trump allies, like Black Conservative Federation President Diante Johnson, defended the former president’s message: “He was talking about black jobs. And we’ve been using that term for a while. This applies to any job. Instead of black people having unlimited access to all types of jobs, illegal immigrants are taking their jobs,” the AP reported.