Trump Will Attend (But Refuses to Speak At) Detroit Black Church

To Prove He’s Not Racist?

Why Does Donald Trump Refuse to Talk Directly to African American Audiences?

Donald Trump has refused to address the NAACP, the National Urban League, and a wide variety of other Black organizations, and Saturday the billionaire businessman will reinforce that pattern as he visits a Black church. He will not address its members.

The trip to Great Faith Ministries in Detroit comes on the heels of several weeks of the Republican nominee claiming, “African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!,” as he did in a tweet exploiting the tragic murder of a Chicago African American mother of four, Nykea Aldridge, who happened to have been Dwyane Wade’s cousin. (Trump, in a surprising change, actually later deleted the controversial post.)

“Trump will ‘give an address to outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country,'” Bloomberg News reported just two days ago, quoting “Pastor Mark Burns, a Trump supporter who arranged a meeting between the Republican presidential nominee and the church’s leader, Bishop Wayne T. Jackson.”

But now, Trump will not address the congregation, but rather, will attend the service and later give an interview to Bishop Jackson.

“That’s about it,” the Detroit Free Press reports today.

“Trump won’t be speaking to the black congregation at Great Faith Ministries International  during the 11 a.m. service. And his Saturday interview with Jackson on the church’s Impact Network — which will not be open to the public or the news media — won’t air for at least a week after the event.”

The trip to Detroit this weekend is his second in a month. In early August Trump delivered an economic policy speech to a mostly white audience, while focusing on what he falsely described are the lives of African Americans in what some say gave his white supporters the ability to feel they aren’t racist for supporting Trump.

“What the hell do you have to lose?,” Trump rhetorically asked African Americans when saying they should vote for him, after making false claims like, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed.”

Even The Wall Street Journal is keenly aware of Trump’s “disingenuous” attempts to appear as if he is reaching out to the African American community, as Derek McCoy, “a black Maryland conservative who organizes clergy for the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a conservative Christian anti-poverty group,” told the conservative newspaper in an article last week titled, “Donald Trump Courts Black Vote While Avoiding African-American Communities.”

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license