Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is baffled by the black community’s continued support for President Obama, despite the “tremendous division” Trump claims Obama has created in the U.S.
“Interestingly, as an African-American, look how poor a job he’s done for African-Americans,” the billionaire told CNBC on Thursday. “It’s incredible to me. African-American youth is 59 percent unemployed. Even African-American people in the age of 30 to 50, very prime ages, has a very high rate of unemployment.”
“I mean, he’s done very, very poorly for African-Americans, and they should be insulted and they should be angry about it, but they don’t seem to be, which is to me amazing,” Trump said.
The billionaire added that he mistakenly thought Obama would be a “great unifier” when he was first elected commander in chief, but now views the President as the country’s greatest source of division.
“He’s a great divider,” Trump said. “There’s tremendous division in this country, whether it’s white and black or so many other things.”
He later claimed, “I am a unifier. I am not a divider, and I think when things settle down and when this very vicious event that’s going on right now is over, I think people will see that.”
“I’ve always been able to bring people together,” Trump said.
Last month, the New York businessman said that if he “were African-American, [he] would be so angry” at Obama. Trump currently leads the GOP field overall, but polls show he currently has nowhere near as much appeal as Democratic presidential front-runner among black voters.
However, in a recent op-ed for USA Today, liberal commentator Tavis Smiley suggested “black America could get on [the] Trump train.”
“While I certainly have had my say about Trump being a “religious and racial arsonist,” not everyone in black America agrees with me,” Smiley wrote last week. “I have been taken aback by myriad conversations I’ve had with black folk who don’t find those comments by Trump necessarily or automatically disqualifying.”
