Donald Trump blew a big opportunity Saturday to convince African-American voters that he’s not just another pandering politician, Al Sharpton said in an interview on MSNBC.
“I think he really blew a tremendous opportunity to really shut a lot of us up that have been questioning him,” he said
“He had the opportunity to really say to black voters … ‘These are things that I’m not only saying we’d like to see the country do, this is how we get there. Here’s my economic policies that would benefit you directly. Here’s my policies on dealing with gun violence, since I said you’d get shot if you walked down the street. Here’s my education policies. Here’s my criminal justice,'” Sharpton said.
“He did none of that!” the founder and president of the National Action Network President said.
Trump appeared at Great Faith International Ministries in Detroit, Mich., this weekend to attend a service and deliver an address in which he claimed he understood the concerns of minority communities.
“I fully understand that the African-American community has suffered from discrimination,” Trump said. “And that there are many wrongs that must still be made right. They will be made right.”
Trump promised his audience that he’d continue to listen to them, and said he’d deliver safety and economic prosperity to their communities. However, he didn’t give specifics on how he planned to accomplish any of that, much to Sharpton’s chagrin.
Instead, Trump gave a “we should learn from each other” speech, Sharpton complained.
“You talk to voters about what you propose they do. You don’t say, ‘I come 70-years-old having been in the public eye 35 years and I’m just discovering what you need and I have no policies to offer you,'” he said.
The former MSNBC host said that Trump’s outreach efforts Saturday were both insulting and “hollow.”
“Now, my suspicion is that if he got specific [about what he’d do for the black community], he would offend some of his hardcore right-wing, ultra-right base because they’d say, ‘Wait a minute, you can’t support, set aside for black businesses, Affirmative Action, because we’re against that.’ So he put himself in a position where he can’t go there,” Sharpton said.
