U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, at a recent rally in West Bend, delivered his most aggressive call yet to woo African-American voters, vowing to restore law and order only days after a fatal police shooting of a black man in Milwaukee sparked violence in the city’s Sherman Park neighborhood.
Trump accused his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of “bigotry” and vowed to protect the jobs of minorities from immigrants.
“I’m asking for the vote for every African-American citizen struggling in our society today who wants a different and much better future,” Trump said. “Jobs, safety, opportunity, fair and equal representation: We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to, and talks down to, communities of color and sees them only as votes – that’s all they care about – not as individual human beings worthy of a better future.”
Trump held three events in Milwaukee. Then he traveled 45 minutes outside of Milwaukee, which is 40 percent black, to deliver his appeal to African-American voters in West Bend, a community that is 95 percent white. He spoke before an almost entirely white audience.
“A vote for her (Clinton) is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime and lost opportunities,” Trump said.
“With each passing Trump attack, it becomes clearer that his strategy is just to say about Hillary Clinton what’s true of himself,” Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said.
Trump said critics of police “share in the responsibility for the unrest in Milwaukee and other places in our country.”
“The war on our police must end and it must end now,” Trump said. “The war on police is a war against all peaceful citizens.”