Don ‘Wades’ into trouble
Donald Trump on Saturday connected the death of NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade’s cousin to his own campaign’s efforts to woo black voters.
“Dwayne Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago,” Trump wrote in a tweet, which was later reposted to correct the misspelling of the Chicago Bull player’s first name.
“Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”
Later on, he added: “My condolences to Dwyane Wade and his family, on the loss of Nykea Aldridge. They are in my thoughts and prayers.”
The tweets were in reaction to the Friday killing of Aldridge, 32, who was caught in crossfire while pushing her baby in a stroller in Chicago’s Parkway Gardens area.
Trump, who casts himself as the law-and-order candidate, has made appeals to African-American voters in recent days, saying the struggles of minority communities are a result of Democrats’ policies.
But Trump’s online critics were puzzled by his tweets — and his ABCs.
“You can’t pretend to care enough to check the spelling of his name before exploiting his cousin’s horrific death?” tweeted Alafair Burke, a novelist.
MTV News correspondent Jamil Smith tweeted: “Exactly how would you have stopped Nykea Aldridge’s murder . . . ? It’s time we learn precisely how you’d magi- cally stop crime.”
And actor Don Cheadle, disparagingly using an ancestral Trump family surname, wrote: “People of Drumpf’s ilk are contributors to the conditions that lead to the ‘Chicagos’ of this country.”
Later in the day, Trump took to the heartland. In Iowa, he expanded on his morning tweets.
“It breaks our hearts,” he said, speaking in front of stacks of hay bales at a Des Moines fund-raiser hosted by Sen. Joni Ernst. “This should not happen in America. We promise to fight for a much, much better tomorrow.”
Trump also bashed Hillary Clinton and detailed his plans on illegal immigration.
Of Clinton, he said, “She will sell you out, and her donors are the only ones who will be happy.”
Trump added that he would develop a tracking system to make sure illegal immigrants who overstay their visas are booted from the US.