Trump Goes Black

Donald Trump’s outreach effort to black leaders this week was portrayed as a botched and bungled meeting, a circus in which the mouthy billionaire declared that the 100-plus pastors in attendance would be endorsing his bid to grab the GOP presidential nomination, only to have the men of God themselves say, not so fast, Donny T.

The cables and the networks and the newspapers mocked the meet-and-greet, even before it happened. And here’s why: Trump had shocked again. This non-candidate who has no business running for president was far out ahead of the other wannabes in the GOP. Mock all you want, but Trump was meeting with black leaders.

Monopoly power. Donald a Trump, as a successful real estate developer, knows how powerful corporate monopolies can be. Unchecked, monopolies kill competition and distort free market principles.

He is savvy enough to see that the Democrats’ hold on the black vote in America is ripe for a bust-up. Conservative principles, properly explained and advocated, will empower, and energize African Americans from all backgrounds. But the fact of the matter is for decades Republicans have largely steered clear of potentially uncomfortable situations in predominantly black areas. But not Donald Trump. He writes his own rules.

Behind the media maelstrom is evidence that the Republican front-runner’s outreach efforts to the African-American community are having an impact. Just having the temerity to meet with black pastors surprised the pillars in the mainstream media. More significantly, Trump is making real inroads into a constituency that has been basically untouchable for Republicans since the 1960s.

Considering that in 2012, 93 percent of blacks in the U.S. voted for Barack Obama and 95 percent voted for him in 2008, for Trump to even get 109 black leaders to sit down with him is a notable achievement in itself.

But even tiny inroads into the black vote pay huge dividends for GOP candidates. In Ohio in 2004, George W. Bush won 16 percent of the black vote, up from 9 percent in 2000, according to exit polls conducted by the National Election Pool. That margin won him re-election.

That same year, Bush took 13 percent of the black vote in Florida, which he won, and 16 percent in Pennsylvania, which he lost. Nationwide, Bush — who made a last-ditch effort to win blacks by saying the Democratic Party was taking the voting bloc for granted — won just 11 percent of the black vote. But if he’d gotten 10 percent, he would have lost to John Kerry.

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Trump’s focus on issues important to black evangelicals, such as yawning rates of unemployment among black men, mirror similar efforts made by fellow presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, whose libertarian leanings and focus on criminal justice reforms have picked up traction in certain African-American communities.

Because of the country’s changing demographics, Republicans are increasingly acknowledging that they must expand their voter base beyond white America to include more minority and urban groups to remain competitive in presidential elections.

Chipping away at the Democrats’ stranglehold on the black vote — even by a few percentage points — could tip the balance in several key swing states.

In 2008, Obama won North Carolina — one of the most fiercely contested purple states — at the height of his popularity with just a 15,000 vote margin. In every presidential election since 2004, blacks have cast more than 20 percent of the overall Democratic vote in the state,. That means if Republicans can pick off even a small fraction of black voters, it could be the deciding factor in the race. Florida and Virginia have similar demographics.

But branching out into new constituencies is a messy endeavor, and talk from the Republican Establishment about appealing to minority groups is largely a euphemism for opening the borders and granting amnesty for illegal immigrants, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump’s outreach to blacks has drummed up controversy.

Even as he was meeting with the pastors on Monday, social media resounded with calls blasting Trump as racist, condescending and mocking toward black people and other minorities.

Many of the pastors who attended the meeting were pasted with vitriol from their own community.

Many of the pastors who attended the meeting were pasted with vitriol from their own community. Dr. Steven Parson, one of the pastors who met with Trump, was lambasted on Twitter as being an “Uncle Tom” who had disowned his roots. “(Y)ou should be ashamed of yourself for supporting such a man. U are an embarrassment to the collective black church,” said one critic.

Last Friday, a group of 150 black liberation theology activists and religious leaders penned an open letter in Ebony magazine condemning the pastors for meeting with Trump and accusing them of being “prosperity gospel” preachers with dollar signs in their eyes.

“Trump’s racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric should give those charged with the care of the spirits and souls of Black people great pause,” they wrote. “What theology do you believe Mr. Trump possesses when his politics are so clearly anti-Black?”

The criticism echoes the sentiment Trump received earlier this fall when he sought to drum up support among conservative Christians by courting televangelist preachers like Kenneth Copeland and Robert Jeffress. Those whom Trump feted were met with swift criticism from Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention, who derided them as heretics who were betraying evangelical values.

But with Trump still cruising at 28.7 percent in the polls, Republicans aiming to muzzle him while he treads do so at their own peril.