Republican Party needs to 'do better' to sway Black voters: Sean Spicer

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer speaks to Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers about the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Video transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: Welcome back to the Yahoo Finance 2020 Republican National Convention special. I'm joined now by Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary under President Trump.

So Sean, I want to start right now with the recent polls that we have out lately. Right now Trump is trailing Joe Biden by roughly eight points. How tight of a race do you think it's going to be in November? And is there any concern from you or from Republicans that Trump actually might lose the election?

SEAN SPICER: So it's good to be with you. You know, look, am I worried? No. It's going to be a close election. We've had close elections since 2000, Bush v. Gore, as those older viewers might remember.

We have-- we are a divided country. We are a close nation. And so it's going to be across 15 states. I will remind people a couple of things.

National polling should not be looked at, and that's whether we're up or down. But the reality is, this isn't a national election. It's a battleground state election. Anywhere between, you know, 10 and 15 states are going to decide this election.

KRISTIN MYERS: So to that point about this being a battle-- an election about the battleground states, because of the coronavirus, essentially the Biden campaign has not-- has had to do all of their campaign events virtually. And--

SEAN SPICER: Yep.

KRISTIN MYERS: --in some instances, have left these battleground states behind. Are you seeing it the same way, that right now the Democrats are not doing enough to win over voters in those battleground states?

SEAN SPICER: You know, Kristin, right now the way-- within these battleground states, the campaigns have enormous amounts of data on the voter. I think it's not-- I don't think anyone would object to saying the Republican's data machine is much better than the Democrats. Hillary was very clear on that after the last cycle. The Democrats did not have what she believed was an adequate data system.

Right now we've gotten to a point since Barack Obama ran where the campaigns are building up voter files on each individual voter, and it's become a much more personal relationship. It's about turning out those folks. The high-propensity folks, meaning the people who vote like it's a religion, they go out every election day. They don't have to be told.

And then really getting those low-propensity voters who may not be a registered Republican or a registered Democrat, but they may be an independent that tends to vote Republican or Democrat, you know, once every four or eight years, getting those people out is going to be crucial. So the question is, who's got the better ground game? And right now to your point, the Biden campaign has made a decision to go entirely virtual.

You know, if they win, OK. I think that this is going to be a-- something that they look back on on November 4 when President Trump gets reelected and say, this was a big mistake. Because not going door-to-door, the studies have all shown that engaging on a personal level with voters is the most effective thing that you could possibly do.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I'm going to just ask you straight-up, how do you think the president has been handling the pandemic? The Biden campaign, to be expected, has lampooned the president for his response. But he's also gotten a lot of criticism from other government officials, from public health officials on his response time to the pandemic, undermining, you know, even members of the government, public health officials like Dr. Fauci. In his response, do you think that the president has made missteps?

SEAN SPICER: I think, look, this is a novel virus, right? And if we look back and you look at how the media handled this, how everyone read it back in January, you had "The Washington Post," Vox, "The New York Times," CNN everyone saying, this isn't going to be that big of a deal. People are panicking. They're hyping this up. No one knew what was coming.

That being said, I think the initial response from the government was strong. There was a period of time a couple of weeks where I think the White House kind of could have done a better job messaging what we should have been doing and how we should be focused. But the last few weeks, I think the president has been pitch perfect when it comes to the response and how he's discussing the-- the need to address the virus both personally in terms of mask wearing, social distancing, et cetera, and where we are as a government trying to pursue both therapeutics and a vaccine.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I want to now ask about the Black vote.

SEAN SPICER: Yeah.

KRISTIN MYERS: Majority of Black voters, obviously right now they do back Joe Biden. And what we've gotten recently from the Trump campaign, a lot of critics are saying it, frankly, just a lot of racist messaging, particularly on the matter of low-income housing, and the suburbs, and suburban housewife right now. So how important is the Black vote to the Republican Party? And how much work do you think the Republicans, and even the president, needs to do in order to essentially tempt Black voters over not just to the party, but to the president himself?

SEAN SPICER: Yeah, so it's a great question. I think, look, the Republican Party, in general, has done horrible in the last couple decades with the Black vote, and they need to do better. One of the big things that I did during my tenure at the White House-- it was led by then chairman Reince Priebus-- was to really make sure that we go out and engage in the Black communities.

I mean, it's a fact that Republicans, especially when it came to house districts, they don't have a ton of urban areas. So you would ignore large-- you know, you wouldn't go into Black neighborhoods, or Black churches, or Black chambers of congress, because they weren't part of the coalition you need to get the 50 plus one. That's a mistake in the party both in terms of the short term and definitely in the long term.

And I think too often-- I had a guest on my show recently, where we talked about this. Republicans say, well, here's what all the reasons why they should be with-- with us, right, in terms of whether it's Black voters or Latino voters. But the reality is, the party's done a really bad job of engaging with them. And that's where I think that we can't just say, well, this is what we stand for.

What I think is going to be really interesting this cycle is that the president, more so than any Republican in recent history, has really made an effort with his policies to really talk about what he's doing for the Black community, whether it's opportunity zones, increases to the historically Black community-- colleges and universities, empowerment zones, criminal justice reform, all of these things are good for the Black community, and they're, frankly, policies that hadn't been done by Republican or Democrat in the past couple of administrations. He's got a strong policy case to go out there. And I think you're starting to see a lot more of the messaging focus on that.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, thanks so much. Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary. Thanks for joining us.

SEAN SPICER: You bet.