Donald Trump's new pitch to black voters—or, to be more accurate, Donald Trump's pitch to white voters who are very nervous about all these black people these days and are currently evaluating whether Donald Trump is capable of properly putting them back in their place—continues apace. His new "What have you got to lose?" plank was further fleshed out in front of a nearly all-white Michigan rally last night.
"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose? And at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African-American vote. I promise you."
Well, that’s a unique approach.
You know, I would wonder if Donald Trump has ever met a genuine black person, but we know he has—he debated retired brain surgeon and fellow presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson not all that many months ago. Do you think he supposes that the good doctor, after each debate, goes home to the dystopian hellhole Donald imagines all black Americans go home to each day? Because I can assure you he does not. Dr. Ben Carson has a very nice and very pleasant house, a house filled with lamps and comfortable chairs and pictures of himself and Jesus relaxing after their respective hard days’ work.
As cribbed from a certain Lewis Black, when he was speaking about another mysterious minority that lily-white conservative wags explain to each other on a regular basis but seem to have never personally met in the American wilds, they walk among you. If you want to talk to black Americans about what is on their minds—or if you want one or several of them to vote for you, specifically, to become leader o' the free world, et cetera, and so on, you could meet one on any one of a million American sidewalks or restaurants or banks or movie theaters or office buildings or in the lobbies of tire retailers while you are waiting for the clerk to call your name and free you from the hard chairs, sticky floors and too-loud television chatter that is your new life now and, you know, ask.
Alas, that seems the one thing Donald Trump will not be doing. Speaking with CNN host Brianna Keiler, Trump surrogate ex-Rep. Jack Kingston, who is from Georgia and who presumably has met one of these Mythical Black Folks at least once or twice in his own state during the course of representing them in Congress, was flummoxed as to why Keiler was unconvinced Trump's visits to nearly all-white suburbs located generally in the same states as where black people might theoretically be counted as "going to" the city or "talking to" black voters:
Keilar jumped in, “I have to stop you because you said he’s going there. He’s not, he’s in Diamondale, which is 93 percent white. When he was in Milwaukee the other day, it was part of Milwaukee that wasn’t dealing — I mean he, it’s almost completely white”
“Well yeah, but Brianna he went,” Kingston began to say over her. “I mean, maybe it would have been nice if he went and had a backdrop with a burning car, but the reality is—”
Keilar cut him off, “No no no no no, I’m not talking about a burning car. I’m talking about meeting with black voters.”
Well his rallies are open to the public, Kingston mewed. They could have come visited if they wanted.