Ashley Bell refutes racism charges
Amid a firestorm of allegations attempting to paint Donald Trump as a ‘racist’, the GOP nominee has big plans for a completely new tactic in Republican politics. According to Ashley Bell, national director of African-American outreach for the Republican National Committee, Trump will be holding events in predominantly black areas beginning next month. As Bell notes in a recent Yahoo News interview,
“Stay tuned. You’re going to see Donald Trump in some very new venues, and he’s going to be speaking to different communities of color with a very purposeful attempt to make sure we’re extending our message to as many Americans as possible.”
As Trump pointed out recently, the racism attack is a standard, even expected practice by desperate democrats attempting to divert attention from the seemingly daily news of more controversial Hillary Clinton emails being discovered. The past two weeks have been especially bad for the former Secretary of State as her sordid history with a private email server keeps providing new revelations. Thus the blitz of diversionary attacks.
Bell defended Trump against the Hillary’s accusations saying,
“I take this very personally when I hear people say that he’s reaching for this bigoted vote, because I’m going to tell you as a strategist as well, there’s no way you could win an election with the very few racially bigoted people left in this country. There are some. They are real, but they’re not the 55 million people, the 60 million people you’re going to need to win. That’s where Hillary Clinton is wrong for trying to call out Donald Trump supporters as racist.”
It has been quite a while since a GOP nominee for president overtly sought support from minorities. The most recent nominee Mitt Romney got about 6% from black voters, Trump is currently polling in the 8% – 10% range depending on source (NBC Survey Monkey most recent shows 8%). Bell addressed the positive aspect of Trump’s outreach,
“This is something you didn’t see with Mitt Romney. How many times could you say that Mitt Romney made a direct appeal to black voters? So as Republicans we’re excited that we have a candidate who is going out saying I want to go out to compete for this vote, and as long as we’re talking about what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s good and what’s bad in black communities, we’re in the discussion, and we’re glad to be there.”
Bell met Trump for the first time along with other minority representatives at Trump Tower. He joined with many others who say they wish folks could see Trump behind the scene as he did.
“I wish America could see what I saw in the room today. He was very affable, very polite, very courteous, and he listened a lot.”
America needs to see this Trump, the one Bell describes and soon.
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Three Jack
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I’ve heard this defense of Trump from nearly every person that’s ever met him. That “the guy behind closed doors” is just fantastic. Well, that’s exactly the problem.
The President of the United States is submitted to the highest level of scrutiny in everything he does in public and in private. I also believe that Trump has learned a major key to politics, which is this: If you go into a room, act nice, smile a lot, compliment everyone, then listen ‘intently’, nod a lot, agree with what everyone is saying, but NOT actually propose anything *just listen*, you will leave with everyone in that room having a great opinion of you – without having actually promised or proposed anything concrete.
To me, it’s tragic that he continues to play people. I hope Mr. Bell can at least influence Trump to the extent that The Donald doesn’t wipe out a few hundred state legislative seats, the Senate majority, and endanger the House. I’ll remain doubtful.
This oughta be interesting.
For all the talk about how the Electoral College favors Democrats, Trump should be thankful that standard is in place, and not a national popular vote—the latter favors Democrats because of huge margins Clinton will get in California (+3 million Obama last time) and New York (+2 million Obama). Maybe she can take Illinois by a million or close to that. You might call those “wasted Democratic votes” because of course you can’t transfer some of those huge margins to swing states like Ohio and Florida. Last time, Florida was decided by only around 75,000 votes. Doubtless Georgia will be closer this time—no one expecting Trump to win the state by the 305,000 or so margin Romney had here four years ago.
I hope they understand that Taco Bell™ does not count as such a venue.
I disagree with Bell’s assessment “there’s no way you could win an election with the very few racially bigoted people left in this country.”
Setting aside the “very few” aspect momentarily, what are common victory margins without an incumbent in the race? An extra few percent is all most candidates need to win. Trump ditching the dog whistle pulled back the curtain hiding the ignorant bigots that the GOP often needs to win. It’s double trouble for candidates, since bigots have twice the relative numbers in primary races (goes for Dems too).
I’d argue its more than a very few. The country made a great stride in making overt racism no longer legally or socially accepted. That has driven some hard racism underground. I expect the words “n—– President” have been uttered a million times for every time I’ve heard them uttered publicly. Donald Sterling type remarks are uttered thousands of times every day.
There are many people not racists in their personal conduct that are racists nonetheless. Its clear that there is systemic racial discrimination even when adjusting for poverty and other factors, yet polls show a plurality of white people don’t think it exists. They’re the modern day equivalent to those that tolerated overt racism.