Trump to Appeal to Black Voters in Detroit

Updated. DETROIT, MI — Donald Trump is expected to speak in Detroit on Saturday, Sept. 3, making his third trip to Michigan since winning the Republican nomination in July in an attempt to break through Democrat Hillary Clinton’s firewall of African-American voters and overcome perceptions that he is racist.

Other details of the visit, first reported by the Washington Post, aren’t firm, but Wayne Bradley, director of the Michigan Republican Party’s Detroit office, told the Detroit Free Press that Trump will meet with community and faith-based leaders.

“Believe it or not, there are people in Detroit who want to hear what he has to say,” Bradley told the Free Press.

Former Republican rival and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson may join Trump and guide him through the impoverished neighborhoods where he grew up. About 83 percent of Detroit residents are African-American or black, and nearly 40 percent of Detroit residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Trump has nowhere to go but up with black voters, where he’s struggling to gain favor. Only 8 percent of registered black voters said they would support him, according to the latest iNBC News/SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll of registered voters.

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Trump's first big plea to black voters came last week in West Bend, Wisconsin — which is 94.8 percent white — after the killing of a black man at the hands of Milwaukee police sparked protests and unrest in Milwaukee.

In Michigan last week, he repeated his impassioned plea to black voters Friday in Dimondale, asking them: “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Speaking to a mostly white audience, he rattled off a list of things they're doing wrong.

“What do you have to lose?” he asked black voters. “You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed.”

The Washington Post said an internal poll of black voters exposes some vulnerability for Clinton when voters are informed of the effect her husband’s crime policies had on African-American communities when he was president.

However, voters in Michigan and Detroit, especially, have historically supported Democrats in presidential elections. In 2008, voters in Detroit supported President Barack Obama over Arizona Sen. John McCain by a margin of 97 percent to 3 percent. In his 2012 re-election campaign against Michigan native Mitt Romney, Obama got 98 percent of the vote.

Mario Morrow, a Detroit political consultant, told the Free Press that it may be too late for Trump to woo voters to his campaign.

“If he had started his campaign off more understanding and trying to reach out to the African-American community or other minority groups and not just talk about building a wall and attacking the Hispanic-American judge and attacking President Barack Obama the way he has with the birth certificate issue, maybe he would have had a chance of securing some votes,” Morrow told the newspaper. “But when he asked what do we have to lose, my integrity was my response.”

Trump also made a major economic speech in Detroit earlier this month, where he said Detroit is an example of Clinton’s failed agenda.

“Detroit is the breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda,” Trump said. “She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community.”

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons