Donald Trump, Shifting Tone, Still Tone Deaf
For example, after his non-apology apology Trump embarked on a series of campaign stops across the industrial Midwest in which he made a direct appeal to African-Americans -- even though his audiences were very obviously white.
Trump turned the traditional art of political promise-making on its head: He asked black Americans, "What do you have to lose?"
"Look at how much African-American communities are suffering from Democratic control," he preached on Friday in Dimondale, Mich., a mostly white town near Lansing.
"To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose? You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?"
It was the sort of speech that one might expect from a candidate who is advising black people without knowing much about black people.
For example, Trump's black youth unemployment claim has been rated as "mostly false" by Politifact. The jobless rate for African-Americans aged 16 to 24 is just under 19 percent, the fact checkers found, not 58 percent.
But to Trump no problem is too serious to be exaggerated in pursuit of votes, especially when the problem can be blamed on Democrats.
Trump's new pitch to blacks in front of white audiences isn't really aimed at African-Americans. It is really aimed at reassuring skeptical white voters that he's not a total racist, even though his vision of black urban life seems to have come from watching HBO's "The Wire."
Trump should get out more. If he visited some black communities, he would find that most of us are not poor, unemployed, breaking the law or itching to kill cops.
As black Republican strategist Ron Christie, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, told NPR, party leaders have "made the mistake of putting the largely African-American messaging in terms of crime, poverty and welfare rather than talking about empowerment, self-sufficiency and achieving the American dream."
Trump knows how to preach that message. It shouldn't be just for whites only.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
