Trump meets with black church groups
Donald Trump has been courting African American voters recently, but has usually made those pitches before mostly white audiences.
Trump was in Dimondale, a Michigan suburb that’s 92.7% white and 0.7% African American, when he predicted in August that he’d win more than 95% of the black vote in 2020 if he gets to run for a second term as president.
But in recent days, the Republican nominee has taken his message directly to African American audiences, meeting with elected officials and clergy in North Philadelphia on Friday and addressing a predominantly black church congregation in Detroit on Saturday.
Delivering an uncharacteristically solemn address in Detroit, Trump expressed discontent with a nation he said was “too divided.”
“We talk past each other, not to each other,” the Republican nominee said, reading from a prepared statement, “and those who seek office do not do enough to step into the community and learn what’s going on .... I’m here today to learn.”
Trump, who trails far behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton among black voters, has insisted for weeks that as president, he would create jobs and build safer communities for African Americans.
Some political observers see his overt pitches to black voters as an attempt to boost his poll numbers with moderate whites who view his past rhetoric as racist.
Trump, whose support among blacks remains in the single digits, was sued by the Department of Justice in the 1970s for housing discrimination against African Americans.
More recently, his campaign has been marked by divisive and racially coded rhetoric. Trump has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country and labeled some Mexican immigrants “rapists” and drug dealers, comments from which he has not backed away.
Last month, Trump told African Americans: “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs.… What the hell do you have to lose?”
During his brief remarks Saturday before Great Faith Ministries International, Trump eschewed such fiery language, favoring a more subdued tone and explaining that better schools and safer communities will be a priority for him if he’s elected president.
“I want to reform that system so that it works for you — everybody in this room,” he said. “I believe that true reform can only come from outside the system.”
Trump, who was joined by former GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, a Detroit native, said he understands the “African American community has suffered from discrimination,” adding that there were “many wrongs” that still needed to be “made right.”
But the overture did not impress Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP.
“It’s nothing but a ruse,” Anthony told CNN. “It’s nothing but a scam.”
During his visit to North Philadelphia on Friday, the real estate mogul met with officials and clergy at a charter school to discuss, among other things, healthcare, immigration and criminal justice reform.
Several dozen protesters lambasted Trump outside, calling him divisive for his plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to ban Muslims from entering the county.
Renee Amoore, deputy chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, attended Friday’s meeting. Amoore, a Trump supporter since the GOP primaries, dismissed the notion that he does not appeal to black voters, despite recent polls such as a USA Today/Suffolk University survey that showed him at 4% support among African Americans.
“He’s here, in a black community — that’s news,” Amoore said. “He is starting a conversation.”
Trump listened to stories of crime and underperforming schools in Philadelphia, taking notes, acknowledging problems and vowing to fix them, she said.
During the meeting, a woman whose daughter was killed in 2007 by a group of men in the country illegally told her story. Trump, as he has throughout the campaign and last week, emphasized that he would deport those in the country illegally with criminal records.
“These are people who shouldn’t be in the country,” Trump told the group.