Why did Trump start Black voter outreach in a white Philly ZIP code? They wouldn't say.

PHILADELPHIA — You could almost feel bad for U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Texas sent by former President Donald Trump on Tuesday to court Black voters in this northeastern city in a swing state.

Hunt's Black voter outreach was pegged to the opening of Trump's first campaign office in Pennsylvania's largest city. That office is in an overwhelmingly white Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood won by President Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Hunt was also tasked with pushing Trump's new initiative to encourage supporters to use mail ballots in November. That will be tricky: The former president continues to attack that practice as "corrupt" and still spouts lies about mail ballot fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Biden.

And Hunt – or any Republican surrogate for Trump, really – has to hope Pennsylvania voters have forgotten that their party attempted to disenfranchise every single one of the nearly 7 million votes cast in the state in 2020. Republican leaders pushed for Congress in January 2021 to toss out the votes of Pennsylvania's Democrats, Republicans, independents and others just because Trump could not swallow the bitter fact that he had been defeated.

How did Hunt handle those challenges? By sticking relentlessly to Trump's talking points while dodging questions about the rest.

Trump picks a white neighborhood to reach Black voters

Let's start with the Trump campaign office in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, where the crowd that enthusiastically greeted Hunt in a cramped little storefront plastered with "Black Americans for Trump" signs looked a lot like the neighborhood – overwhelmingly white.

Philadelphia is divided into 66 wards for elections. Holmesburg, in the city's 64th ward, is dominated by Democrats, with 57% of the voter registration, compared with 27% for Republicans.

A post-election 2020 Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of the ward showed it to be 77% white residents, while 10% were Latino and 6% were Black.

I asked Hunt, who is Black, why the Trump campaign didn't send him to one of Philadelphia's many majority-Black neighborhoods or open an office in one of those locations. He pointed to some members of the audience who were Black.

"We're talking about getting at least 25 to 30% of the Black male vote," Hunt said as an aide cut off my attempt to get him to actually answer my question.

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Trumpian lies about the election continued in Philadelphia

In pushing for Trump supporters to use mail ballots, Hunt leaned in hard on the former president's many lies about that practice being corrupted to steal the 2020 election, which he lost fair and square to Biden.

"Our goal is to win outside the margin of cheating, by any means necessary," Hunt declared while offering no proof of any cheating.

Trump, during a campaign rally last month in Wildwood, New Jersey, again derided mail ballots as "largely corrupt."

Hunt also echoed Trump's bogus bewilderment about ballot counting in the 2020 election, when he was ahead on Election Day but then lost that lead to Biden as mail ballots were tallied in the days after.

Some states, including Pennsylvania, prohibit the counting of mail ballots until the polls open on Election Day. That causes entirely predictable delays, which – surprise, surprise – were predicted before the 2020 election.

Republicans know they need voters to forget all the election lies

The larger issue, which Trump seems to have succeeded for now in memory-holing, is that he tried to have every vote for president from every Pennsylvanian tossed out four years ago.

Biden prevailed in the state by just over 1 percentage point among more than 6.9 million ballots cast.

Hunt, who is in his first term in the U.S. House, was not in office for the certification vote, when 147 Republicans, including eight from Pennsylvania, tried but failed to overturn the election in an early-morning vote on Jan. 7, 2021, after the insurrection Capitol was put down.

Hunt told me he is "not at all" worried that Pennsylvania voters will hold that against Trump, pivoting to concerns about immigration and the economy.

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And here, he seems to have reason to be cautiously optimistic. A survey of Pennsylvania presidential polls compiled by RealClearPolitics shows Trump with a lead of 2.3 percentage points over Biden.

Hunt, like other Republicans clamoring to return Trump to the White House, wants voters to forget 2020 and focus on their current circumstances. One big problem there: Trump can't stop talking about the election he lost four years ago.

Biden does have a problem with Black voters. His campaign is also responding.

Biden knows a significant number of Black voters who supported him in 2020 are feeling far less enthusiastic about November. He rallied in Philadelphia last week with Vice President Kamala Harris to directly address that.

Unlike Trump's campaign, Biden and Harris were able to locate a neighborhood where a majority of the residents are Black. They spoke at Girard College in Philadelphia's 29th ward, where 77% of the residents are Black.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat who represents Northeast Philadelphia, had a good laugh about the Trump campaign stumping for Black votes in Holmesburg.

"Only Donald Trump could be so incompetent that he would do 'Black voter outreach' in Northeast Philly," Boyle texted me. "That's like doing rural voter outreach in Times Square."

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Kellan White, a senior adviser for Biden's campaign in Pennsylvania, added this: "Donald Trump is a convicted felon who couldn't find an actual Pennsylvanian to headline his phony event."

Biden's campaign already has 24 offices in Pennsylvania, including two in Philadelphia. So he has the jump on Trump in all kinds of voter outreach in a state critical to holding the presidency.

Trump stunned Clinton in 2016 as the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state since 1988. Biden's hopes for repeating a narrow victory here in November, for now, rests on Trump camp stumbles like stumping for Black votes in white neighborhoods and pushing mail ballots while their candidate calls them corrupt.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump courts Black voters in white, Biden-friendly neighborhoods. Huh?