Clinton, Trump decry latest police shootings of black men
Boxing promoter Don King shows support for Republican in Cleveland
CLEVELAND — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton decried a fresh round of police-involved shootings on Wednesday, with the Republican nominee saying he was “very troubled” by the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Oklahoma.
Courting black voters who have long spurned Republicans, Trump’s event in Cleveland Heights’ New Spirit Revival Center took a bizarre turn when he was introduced by boxing promoter Don King, who used a racial slur as he made the case for black voters to support Trump.
Trump’s latest foray into the black community sought to connect with voters in Cleveland, home to a large community of African-American voters key to Clinton’s prospects in Ohio, but also with moderate suburban voters, who frequently hear Clinton describe Trump as extreme.
King, introducing Trump, raised eyebrows when he said a black man is always framed by his skin color, recalling he once told pop icon Michael Jackson “if you’re poor, you’re a ‘poor Negro.’ If you’re rich, you’re a ‘rich Negro.’ ” An educated black man is “an intellectual Negro.”
King, who is black, said: “If you’re a dancing and sliding and gliding n----- — I mean Negro — you are ‘a dancing and sliding and gliding Negro.’” Gasps and laughs could be heard from the audience.
At the end of the Ohio church event organized by members of his diversity coalition, Trump was asked about recent highprofile police shootings in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Trump said 40-year-old Terence Crutcher, killed in Friday’s Tulsa, Okla., shooting, “looked like he did everything you’re supposed to do.”
“This young officer, I don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I’m very, very troubled by that,” Trump said, calling it a “terrible situation.”
Clinton notably made no direct mention of Trump in a speech in Orlando. She pointed to the Oklahoma and North Carolina shootings at the start of her remarks, saying it added two more names “to a long list of African Americans killed by police officers. It’s unbearable and it needs to become intolerable.”
Clinton has made curbing gun violence and police brutality a central part of her candidacy. She has campaigned along a group of black women called the “Mothers of the Movement,” who advocated for more accountability and transparency by law enforcement and includes the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin.