The criminal justice forum at Benedict College, a historically black college in South Carolina, was supposed to be a chance for 10 Democratic candidates to outline their appeal to African American voters. That all changed a week before the event, with the announcement that President Trump would appear first.

And so it was that the Trump 2020 campaign playlist regaled the audience in the college’s performing arts center with Michael Jackson’s Beat It, followed by Lionel Richie’s Hello, and then, most incongruously of all for a criminal justice gathering, Macho Man by the Village People.