REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Donald Trump has made a sustained pitch to African-American voters, asking: “What do you have to lose?”
Trump said that black voters “are living in poverty” and their “schools are no good”.
“No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton’s policies than African Americans,” Trump told an almost all-white audience in Dimondale, Michigan.
If Hillary Clinton’s goal was to inflict pain on the African American community, she could not have done a better job. It’s a disgrace.
He told the crowd that he was asking for the vote of “every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future.”
“Look how much African American communities have suffered under Democratic control,” he said.
To those I say the following: what do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?
The New York billionaire’s controversial run for the presidency has attracted white supremacists, alienated immigrants and done little to win over minorities.
He added that blacks were living in poverty, facing disproportionately high unemployment rates and lacking good schools.
Your schools are no good, you’re living in poverty… What the hell do you have to lose?
He said his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, “would rather provide a job to a refugee” than to unemployed black youths, “who have become refugees in their own country”.
African American voters have overwhelmingly flocked to Clinton. The Republican presidential nominee languishes in the polls both nationwide and in virtually every battleground state ahead of November’s election.
Ignorant
Clinton called Trump’s remarks “so ignorant it’s staggering”.
Trump also predicted he would receive 95% of the African-American vote if he went to on to run for a second term in 2020.
President Barack Obama, historically the most popular president among African-Americans in US history, received 93% of the black vote in 2012. In 1996, Bill Clinton won 84% of the black vote.
In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney won just 6% of the black vote. Polls show about 2% of black voters vote for Trump.
Jamil Smith, a black reporter for MTV News, wrote on Twitter that the appeal was designed to make white voters think Trump isn’t racist.
Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor, wrote: ”This is so incredibly condescending, words to articulate a reaction simply escape me”, later adding:
Ku Klux Klan
On several occasions, African-American protesters have been assaulted by Trump supporters at rallies.
And the Republican nominee came under heavy criticism earlier this year, after he took days to distance himself from the endorsement of a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Trailing badly in national polls for weeks, Trump desperately needs to broaden his appeal beyond his base of white working-class voters.
Yesterday, his campaign announced that Paul Manafort, a seasoned political operative who led his campaign for the past three months, stepped down.
It followed his campaign’s second relaunch this week, with the appointment of pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, and conservative media executive Stephen Bannon as campaign’s CEO.
Manafort’s financial links to alleged corruption by the pro-Russian former Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych have drawn scrutiny in recent days.
The FBI and Justice Department are investigating Manafort’s firm as part of a broad probe of US links to the former Ukranian regime.
Trump also apologised this week for “causing personal pain” – an act of contrition mocked this afternoon by the Clinton campaign:
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