(No caption)
To critics, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump sounded silly at best when he solicited the support of black voters in Detroit and elsewhere in a speech delivered at a suburban Lansing rally on Friday.
"Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?" he asked. "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?"
He also talked in Dimondale about all poverty and joblessness in Detroit, and remarked:
Forty percent of Detroit’s residents, 40 percent, live in poverty. Half of all Detroit residents do not work and cannot work and can't get a job. Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime. Number one.
Philip Bump, who writes about politics for The Fix column in the Washington Post, isn't impressed:
There are any number of reasons that black Americans might view Trump unfavorably, starting with his 2011 effort to cast suspicion on Obama's place of birth. Or, probably, starting with his full-page ad calling for the death penalty against five black teenagers in New York City who were accused of rape — wrongly, as it turned out. Or perhaps thanks to the support his current candidacy is getting from people like former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.
There's no reason to think that Trump's suggestion that black Americans had "nothing to lose" because they "are living in poverty" will do anything to reverse that trend. Nor was his insistence in North Carolina that he should get votes from black voters because "the inner cities are so bad." Some black people, research shows, live in places besides the "inner city."
So why make the argument? It could be, simply enough, that Trump doesn't have anyone in his inner circle that can provide a sense of how to reach out to the black community.
Bump also points to what he considers Trump's "laughable" prediction:
"At the end of four years, I guarantee you, that I will get over 95 percent of the African American vote. I will produce for the inner cities, and I will produce for the African Americans. The Democrats will not produce, and all they've done is taken advantage of your vote. That's they've done. And once the election's over, they go back to their palaces in Washington, and you know what, they do nothing for you, just remember it."
