"Are you a paid campaign surrogate? Are you being compensated?" Melvin bluntly asked.

“Let me be clear. You get paid to shape a liberal narrative. You get paid to attack this president,” Jones shot back. "I don’t get a dime for this president. I don’t get a dime from the campaign. Everything I’ve done has been me and based on my principles.”

"To insult me, to say am I getting paid? That is disgraceful!"

Democrat @RepVernonJones DESTROYS @craigmelvin for questioning his support for President Trump.

"You only ask me that because I don't fit your narrative."

Full here: https://t.co/d6FFBIaOE9 pic.twitter.com/9MJt1yzeO1

— Heidi Heitkamp (@HeitkampHeidi) July 30, 2020

Jones then started to discuss how African Americans are expected to oppose Trump but Melvin cut him off. “Sir, I did not raise your race,” Melvin said as bickering intensified.

“Let me finish now. Let me finish,” Jones said.

"No, no, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re not going to imply that I asked that question because you’re Black," Melvin responded.

"So don’t ask me that. You only ask me that because I don’t fit your narrative. I don’t want anything from this president. It’s what I can do for my country and you need to accept that many other African Americans and others support this president because of his policies. And to insult me to say am I getting paid, that is disgraceful,” Jones said

“That’s representative of MSNBC and their narrative to keep Blacks silent who happen to support this president,” Jones added. “Why can’t I be like White liberals or other Whites, nobody questions if they’re getting paid, so do you ask Democrats [if] are they getting paid? Are you getting paid by Joe Biden?”

The network did it in order to perpetuate a myth that makes its predominantly-White, liberal audience members feel good about themselves. The myth is that the only African-Americans in the country who support the president are financially motivated hucksters putting on a minstrel act for some imaginary cigar-chomping conservative White man.

Despite Mr. Melvin’s protestations, I cannot recall a single instance of the network asking a question like that of any one the deep roster of Black faces it has on to defend every embarrassing gaffe and racially insensitive remark that comes out of Joe Biden’s mouth.

MSNBC pulled the exact same stunt with my fellow Trump-supporter Bruce LeVell last week.

It’s a narrative that MSNBC’s White viewers crave because it lets them feel like one of the “good Whites” who stand selflessly on the side of poor, helpless Black people — who they casually assume are universally in favor of the big-government policies favoreSince then, President Trump’s performance in office has delivered more genuine economic prosperity and social progress to Black Americans than any of his predecessors, Obama included. The results have convinced many more Black people who are “supposed to” vote for Joe Biden to come over to the MAGA movement.

I am one of them — and not only was I not paid to make my decision, it didn’t even require me to adjust any of my principles or beliefs.d by their White “allies.”

It’s a demonstrably false narrative. In 2016, more than 1.3 million Black Americans cast their ballots for Donald Trump, a marked improvement over Mitt Romney’s performance despite a desperate campaign by MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets to convince us that Trump was an unforgivable racist.

I was elected in Georgia as a Democrat in three separate decades. I don’t support Donald Trump because I’ve changed my ideas on what’s important; I support him precisely because I have not changed.

I got involved in politics in order to help working people in my community — especially the Black people who had gotten the short end of the stick in successive Democratic and Republican administrations — not to join in the social crusades of an over-educated and overwhelmingly liberal elite.

I support Donald Trump because he is objectively better at lifting Black people — and all people — out of poverty and into prosperity and upward mobility than any big-government Democrat has any hope of being.

MSNBC’s cynical question, posed to me and my fellow Trump-supporting African-Americans, is intended to intimidate us and keep us from expressing that plain truth. If MSNBC can get away with casting people like me and Bruce LeVell as paycheck-hungry, desperate sell-outs, then its viewers can go on pretending that Black Trump supporters like us do not exist.

They won’t be able to play that game after November, when the president will outdo his 2016 support among Black voters. Are they going to imply that millions of us are all being paid?