Despite Donald Trump’s lengthy record of overt racism, the degree to which Black communities suffered during his presidency, and his increasingly ugly and divisive vision for a possible second term, Republicans remain convinced that the presumptive GOP nominee can and will make significant gains this year with Black voters.

With this in mind, a group of Black Republicans hosted an event Wednesday in an Atlanta barbershop, apparently as part of a larger outreach effort. At face value, the gathering wasn’t exactly a great success: A New York Times reporter noted that local voters were far outnumbered by reporters and staffers.

Complicating matters, Trump phoned in to the event and peddled a problematic message. After the former president boasted about his tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations, the Republican candidate reflected on the key to his success with communities of color. NBC News reported:

“The mug shot is the best ev — it just beat Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra by a lot. That’s the No. 1 mug shot of all time. It’s really an amazing thing. Since it happened, the support among the Black community and Hispanic community has skyrocketed,” Trump said over the phone when he called into the event, which featured former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and GOP Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida as surrogates for his campaign.

He didn’t seem to be kidding. By all appearances, Trump genuinely pitched the idea that Black people like him more because he’s a criminal.

If the line sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. Last summer, as the former president’s legal troubles intensified, a variety of conservative media personalities insisted that Trump’s mugshot would make him popular in minority communities. Fox News’ Jesse Waters, for example, claimed he knew what people were saying on “the streets,” adding Trump’s mugshot “turned Trump into a sympathetic character in Black America” — “a martyr” who “represents someone persecuted by the man.”

My MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained soon after that the right was pushing “a bigoted, desperate claim.”

“[I]f you don’t trust Black people’s intelligence to begin with — if you don’t believe in their ability to discern fact from fiction — it’s easy to assume that many of them would be fine voting for a criminally indicted hatemonger like Trump just because he’s been arrested,” Ja’han added.

But as offensive as it was to see the comments from many conservative media figures, it’s worse to hear it from the former president himself.