Despite his latest victory in the South Carolina primary, presidential hopeful Donald Trump doesn’t have much to offer African-Americans and the storyline gets worse: White supremacist groups like the KKK are now reportedly recruiting members by invoking Trump’s name.
Trump, the Republican frontrunner, is attracting more white supremacists to his racially incendiary campaign. Here’s how it reportedly plays out: White nationalists groups will take a newspaper with a Donald Trump story and show it to white patrons at bus stops, coffee shops, on trains, and pitch their white-only organizations.
And by some accounts it’s effective. Trump’s anti-politically correct campaign resonates with many white supremacists even though Trump maintains that he hasn’t endorsed any hate groups.
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Like many of the other GOP candidates, Trump has not offered a detailed plan that would uplift African-Americans and people of color.
Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX); Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL); the main contenders left standing for the Republican nomination, don’t talk much about poverty, racism, criminal justice reform, voting rights, or affirmative action — all issues of concern to many Black Americans.
But recently, Trump’s racial views have been questioned: He has called Mexicans “rapists,” a Black man was kicked, punched and called the N-word by whites at a Trump rally last year, and Trump proudly boasts that he can do more for African-Americans than President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
Still, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., insists that Trump will garner a good portion of the Black vote if he becomes the Republican nominee.
“I think he’s going to be talking about issues that could appeal to African-Americans — like trade,” Sessions told reporters. “So I think there could be support for him there.”
Trump agreed with Sessions and said he is unlike most Republicans.
“Generally, Republicans do not do well with African-Americans,” Trump said last year during a speech to the Greater Charleston Business Alliance, which is affiliated with the South Carolina African-American Chamber of Commerce. “I have a lot of friends, African-Americans in New York, they say, ‘You’re going to get most of the vote.’ ”
Trump is trying to defy the odds: George W. Bush won 11 percent of black voters in 2004 and Mitt Romney received only about 6 percent in 2012 against President Barack Obama.
But let’s review Trump’s past.
Trump was accused of making racial slurs against Black people in book written in 1991 by John R. O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, called Trumped!
In the book, O’Donnell wrote that Trump once said, in reference to a Black accountant at Trump Plaza, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.” He also said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
And in 1989, after the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the return of the death penalty after five African-American teenagers were arrested for the assault. All five teenagers were eventually exonerated and Trump’s actions infuriated New York’s black community.
Today, Trump’s racial rhetoric continues to attract white supremacists who hate African-Americans and other people of color.
Obama said with conviction that Trump will never make it to the White House because voters will not rally around a former reality television star.
He may be right – but he could be wrong.
What do you think?
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