Former President Donald Trump wants Americans to know that he's not a racist -- and he has the Black friends to prove it.
In an interview with Semafor, Trump touted his relationships with assorted retired Black athletes such as former NFL player Lawrence Taylor and boxer Mike Tyson to shore up his standing with the Black community.
“I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” said Trump. “They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist — and I’m not racist!”
Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.
Trump has in the past touted his relationships with boxing kingpin and convicted killer Don King in an effort to court Black voters, but, as Semafor notes, the results so far have been lacking.
"He lost Black voters by a 92-8 margin in his last election, according to a Pew Research study, despite high hopes for a breakthrough that cycle," the report notes. "In 2016, he settled for boasting that fewer Black voters had showed up to the polls that year, which he said was 'almost as good' as their support."
RELATED: 'Bring your felon to work day': Dems slam Trump-D.C. visit as GOP enjoys 'mandatory fun'
Of course, Trump also has a long history of race baiting, most infamously when he said there were some "very fine people" among the white nationalist rioters at the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and when he led a national crusade to declare America's first Black president to be ineligible for the post based on bogus conspiracy theories about him having been born in Kenya.
Trump, however, thinks that Black voters will see "strength" and support him anyway.
"They see what I’ve done and they see strength, they want strength, okay,” he told the publication. “They want strength, they want security. They want jobs, they want to have their jobs. They don’t want to have millions of people come and take their jobs. And we — that’s what’s happening. These people that are coming into our country are taking jobs away from African Americans and they know it.”