Trump courts Black voters with promise of jobs, investment
Washington, Sep 25 (efe-epa).- President Donald Trump said Friday that he has a “bold vision” to improve life for Black people in the United States if he wins a second term in the Nov. 3 election.
“I’m here today to announce a brand-new plan to deliver more opportunity, more security, more fairness, and more prosperity to Black communities. We call it the Platinum Plan, and that’s a contract with Black Americans,” he said during a Black Voices for Trump event in Atlanta.
“If you vote Republican over the next four years, we will create 3 million new jobs for the Black community, open 500,000 new black-owned businesses, increase access to capital in Black communities by $500 billion,” the president said.
The plan also calls for making Juneteenth – referring to June 19, 1865, when Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger proclaimed in Galveston, Texas, an order freeing slaves in the Lone Star State – a federal holiday and national legislation against lynching.
Trump likewise pledged to designate the Ku Klux Klan and Antifa as terrorist organizations.
Founded after the Civil War by ex-Confederate officers, the KKK was described as “terrorist” by a federal grand jury in 1870 and is blamed for thousands of deaths.
The Klan had an estimated 4 million members nationwide in the 1920s, but is now thought to number no more than 15,000 people, organized in independent chapters.
Antifa (anti-fascism) is not an organization, but a movement that arose in Europe in the 1930s in opposition to figures such as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
While protesters identifying as Antifa have been known to engage in vandalism, there is no evidence linking the movement’s followers to terrorism.
The president rolled out the Platinum Plan in the wake of renewed Black Lives Matter mobilizations across the country following the announcment that Louisville, Kentucky, police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Black paramedic Brionna Taylor will not face charges for her death.
In his speech to African-American supporters, Trump evinced sympathy for Taylor and other Blacks who have perished in encounters with police, such as George Floyd.
“Our hearts break for their families and for all families who have lost a loved one,” the president said, though hastening to add in regard to the protests: “But we can never allow mob rule.”
He went on to repeat his denunciation of Black Lives Matter, which, like Antifa, is a movement rather than an organized group.
“This is an unusual name for an organization whose ideology and tactics are right now destroying many Black lives,” Trump said.
Though the real estate mogul and former reality television star known for racist utterances is unpopular with the vast majority of Blacks in the US, he has made an effort to portray himself as a champion of African Americans. EFE
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