In a campaign
first for the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump attends a
black church service in Detroit. Trump dances at Great Faith
Ministries before speaking to those in attendance. Reading from a
script and adopting a milder tone than at previous campaign rallies
and debates, the billionaire businessman says “the African American
community is suffering from discrimination and there are many wrongs
that must still be made right. They will be made right. I want to
make them right.”
A sea of
protesters and a heavy police presence surrounded the church, as
local residents along Grand River Avenue looked on. Chants of “No
Trump, go home Trump” were raised by about 75 people in a march
organized by local pastors and activists.
Trump
flashes humility in first ever black church visit
The
Republican nominee spoke of Abraham Lincoln, calling for ‘a civil
rights agenda for our time.’
By Shane Goldmacher
09/03/16 01:28 PM
EDT
DETROIT —
Campaigning at an African-American church for the first time during
the presidential race, Donald Trump called for “a civil rights
agenda for our time” and cast himself as the candidate who could
best “rebuild Detroit” and struggling black communities across
the nation.
In a 12-minute
speech he read from the center aisle at Great Faith Ministries, the
Republican nominee shaved off the rougher edges of the pitch he’s
previously made to African-American voters, mostly before white
audiences — “what the hell do you have to lose?” he has said in
the past — and traded it in for uncharacteristic humility.
“I just wrote this
the other day, knowing I'd be here,” Trump began, “and I mean it
from the heart and I'd like to just read it and I think you'll
understand it maybe better than I do in certain ways.”
“I am here today
to listen to your message and I hope my presence here will also help
your voice to reach new audiences in our country and many of these
audiences desperately need your spirit and your thought,” Trump
said.
Trump, who sat in
the front row with surrogate Dr. Ben Carson and Theresa “Omarosa”
Manigault, a former “Apprentice” contestant who is director of
Trump’s African-American outreach, praised the church as “the
conscience of our country, so true” and said black churches
inspired the nation “toward a better moral character, a deeper
concern for mankind, and spirit of charity and unity that binds us
all together.”
The Detroit trip
seemed stage-managed to minimize any potential missteps, with a
leaked script earlier in the week of the questions-and-answers Trump
was supposed to deliver in a television interview conducted before
the service with Jackson. Despite that, Trump claimed at the church,
“I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I didn’t know.
Is this going to be nice? Is this going to be wild?”
Inside the church,
the event was ticketed, ensuring all the protests remained outside.
And before Trump spoke, he met privately with about 100 congregants
but no press, even pool reporters, were allowed in to hear this
unscripted discussion.
Despite many polls
showing him with historically low support among black voters, Trump
cast himself as a Republican in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln at
Great Faith Ministries.
“Becoming the
nominee of the party of Abraham Lincoln, a lot of people don’t
realize that, Abraham Lincoln, the great Abraham Lincoln was a
Republican, has been the greatest honor of my life,” Trump said.
“It is on his legacy that I hope to build the future of the party
but more importantly the future of the country.”
The absence of a
clear campaign strategy makes Donald Trump's path to 270 electoral
votes even more difficult.
Moments after Trump
spoke, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has sought to tie Trump to
racist elements of the “alt-right” and some of his
white-nationalist supporters, distributed statements from black
leaders saying Trump’s outreach was too little, too late.
Church-goers in
Detroit were open to listening to Trump, though most remained cool to
the notion of actually voting for him. Joseph McFadden, a Democrat
who said he would vote Democratic this fall, said, “We’re here to
listen.”
Rows of seats remain
empty in the back half of the church as Donald Trump prepares to
speak at Great Faith Ministries church in Detroit, September 3, 2016.
Rows of seats remain
empty in the back half of the church as Donald Trump prepares to
speak at Great Faith Ministries church in Detroit, September 3, 2016.
| Shane Goldmacher
In his speech, Trump
called for a “civil rights agenda” and included “school choice”
and economic opportunity at its center.
“One that ensures
the rights to a great education, so important, and the right to live
in safety and in peace and to have a really, really great job, a good
paying job and one that you love to go to every morning and that can
happen.”
“Nothing is more
sad,” Trump added later, “than when we sideline young black men
with unfulfilled potential.”
Trump’s subdued
rhetoric was a jarring contrast to his typically boisterous rallies.
Chuck Westbrook, a
lifelong Detroit resident who attended the service, said Trump's tone
here was unfamiliar, “like a weak little whisper from Donald
Trump.”
Westbrook said Trump
would struggle to cut into Clinton’s overwhelming support among
African-Americans. “Her track record is so long with black people,”
he said, mentioning her work for children in the 1970s. “Donald
Trump hasn’t done anything for black people in 30 years.”
Trump wrapped up his
church appearance with a reading from the Bible and seemed a bit
surprised that everyone cheered when he named the passage he would
read. “Most groups I speak to, don’t know that,” he said. “But
we know it.”
Keith Owens, a
senior editor at the Michigan Chronicle, the oldest black newspaper
in Michigan, was skeptical of both Trump’s intentions and the
political impact of his visit. “Just because he’s friends with
Mike Tyson and has Omarosa doing outreach doesn’t make him
appealing to black people,” Owens said.
Owens said Trump was
right in diagnosing many of the ailments in black America — “too
much violence, too much a lot of things,” Owens said, including
poverty and illiteracy — but that Trump was short on solutions.
“He operates on
fear and negativity,” Owens said. “All he has talked about is
what is wrong.”
Trump's first visit
to a black church was heavily hyped, but did not draw a full crowd.
There were rows and rows of empty seats in the back half of the
church, even as the Trump campaign did not provide an opportunity for
some local reporters to attend.
In the conclusion of
his speech, Trump said, “It is my prayer that America of tomorrow,
and I mean that, the America of tomorrow will be one of unity,
togetherness and peace. And perhaps we can add the word prosperity.”
After his speech,
Jackson, who had interviewed Trump for a broadcast to be televised
later in the week before the service, draped Trump in a prayer shawl
he gave Trump as a gift.
Trump left with his
security detail after receiving the gift and before the service was
over. He went on to tour Carson’s childhood Detroit home.
“We’re bound
together and I see that today,” Trump said. “This has been an
amazing day for me.”
Shane Goldmacher
@ShaneGoldmacher
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