Trump courts black vote
“It should be a red flag for the Democratic Party.” That’s what Northeast regional director of the National Action Network and minister Kirsten John Foy told Yahoo News & Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga on “Yahoo News Live” on the subject of Donald Trump’s outreach to the Africa-American community. Foy and Yahoo News National Correspondent Hunter Walker were on to discuss a scheduled meeting that the Republican presidential candidate had with African-American religious leaders. Originally slated as an endorsement event and press conference, it was later changed to be a private “meet and greet” with Trump.
Despite the cancellation of the public event, Foy told Golodryga, “If a guy like Trump can access and get this many black clergy people, it means there’s a void.” Foy continued, “If I were a Democrat running a presidential campaign, I would be concerned that there was this void and that void exists because the Democrats are taking the black church for granted.”
On the black vote, Foy told Golodryga, “We have a diverse community, politically diverse community. There are a lot of conservative pastors … but this was a shocker for us, and not so much that they were having this meeting but that he was able to pull off … what initially was billed as an endorsement meeting … without hearing about it until after it was said.”
On canceling the event itself, Walker, who recently interviewed Trump, told Golodryga: “We have never seen in his campaign him canceling an event like this ahead of time. … It was very, very odd. We were all waiting to get credentialed, and the event evaporated.”
That Trump was able to gather so many African-American clergy members is a bad sign for Democrats, Foy indicated to Golodryga: “He has the savvy to realize he can lambaste the Black Lives Matter movement one week and the next week meet with black evangelical leadership. He recognizes that it’s not a monolithic voting block.” Foy continued, “The Democrats have to play some catch-up.”
Finally, with just over 60 days to go until the Iowa caucuses, Golodryga asked Walker about Trump’s strategy. He explained, “The key thing to remember with Trump — and it’s as important as with his relationship with the African-American community — is that he has a base of 20 percent of the Republican Party. They seem to be sticking with him no matter what he does, no matter what controversy happens, and I think his strategy is to preserve that base and hope that it really does show up in Iowa, where you have caucus-based organizing and the ground game is really important, and take that to the finish line.”
