Shannon: GOP Will Maintain 2024 Gains With Black Voters Even Without Trump

DALLAS, President Donald Trump will not appear on the ballot for the 2026 midterm elections, yet T.W. Shannon believes Republicans can hold onto the ground gained from his impressive performance with Black voters in 2024. Shannon, a former Oklahoma state House Speaker who served last year in the second Trump administration and now stands as the Republican lieutenant governor nominee back home, argues that specific GOP policies combined with the Democratic Party's shift to the left will keep momentum going.

Trump secured 16% of the Black vote in the 2024 presidential election, a figure from Fox News Voter Analysis that is nearly double what he received four years prior.

"It's because Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party back into the working party. You see Democrats competing for the Black vote now. Something that you used to not see at all. They didn't have to, they just took it for granted," Shannon told Fox News Digital Thursday while standing on the sidelines of the first ever GOP midterm convention.

Shannon highlighted job creation and lowered crime rates under the second Trump administration as key factors. "These are things that actually benefit...Black voters and Black communities." He then turned his attention toward Democratic candidates backed by or aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

"Look at what....the DSA is offering, you know, we're talking about raising taxes, we're talking about doing away with the Senate... disbanding the police," he said. "These are not things that are well received in the Black community."

Democrats push back hard against Shannon's take.

"Black Americans are going to reject Trump's billionaires-first, cost-raising agenda at the ballot box this November and elect Democrats who are fighting to lower costs and deliver for working families," a Democratic National Committee spokesperson said to Fox News Digital. The spokesperson added that the DNC is pouring critical resources into reaching, registering, and mobilizing Black voters nationwide. While the Trump administration continues to attack civil and voting rights, they insist they are fighting to protect the core of our democracy.

Shannon, who hails from Lawton, became his state's youngest and first African American House speaker in 2013, marking him as the first member of the Chickasaw Nation to hold that office. He is favored to win in November given solidly Republican Oklahoma. Speaking in primetime at the convention gave him a chance to stand on the "national stage."

"Any time I get a chance to tell the story about how great Oklahoma is and how great America is, I won't miss a chance to do it," he said.