Miserly Billionare Trump Donated Nothing to Katrina and 9/11 Victims [MORE]
The drip-drip-drip of "birther" propaganda is part of a general, persistent assault on the legitimacy of immigrants and non-whites in American culture. Lurking behind the rhetoric of "I want my country back" is a simple refusal to recognize the citizenship, or even the humanity, of anyone but white males.[MORE]
Trump's shows boast a solid African-American viewership and black cast members [and a recent NBC/WSJ poll found, according to NBC's Domenico Montanaro, that the among the groups that views him most positively is African-Americans], some of whom he's likely alienating. "As a people, we celebrated his business acumen; purchased his books and anything else with the Trump name we could get our hands on," Goldie Taylor wrote on The Grio. (the show is dogshit -BW).
From [HERE] Donald Trump's strategy of spurring interest in his presidential campaign by flirting with discredited theories about President Barack Obama's birthplace is stirring a growing backlash among prominent African-Americans who believe Trump is making a coded racial appeal.
Trump's confrontational appearances had already begun to raise questions about whether his political flirtation was, as widely assumed, a stunt aimed at raising his profile and ratings, and his willingness to alienate a share of the television audience -- and to drag his cautious corporate employers into the incendiary politics of race -- have spurred speculation that he has either badly miscalculated or is serious about running for president.
"There's a lot of people that I've talked to [who] instinctively think that he's using the issue as a proxy for race," Urban League President Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor, told POLITICO. "I don't know if it has resonance in the Republican Party but I certainly think it has resonance in certain far right elements of the American public."
"It's like a modern day Salem witch trial -- because there's no merit to it," he said.
Morial's comment follows escalating criticism from black colleagues of Trump's in the entertainment industry.
"He needs to stop saying that racist bulls--- Birther s---," Grammy Award-winning singer John Legend told The Root last week. "Quote me, please. He should be ashamed of himself. It's awful, really."
Bill Cosby has also engaged in a public spat with Trump, who is only running, Cosby said, "his mouth."
"Donald Trump is such a looser 2 me this morning by trashing our president!" actress Vivica Fox tweeted. "I mean really dude! STFU!" His "Celebrity Apprentice" castmate Star Jones also tweeted her objection to birther views, and suggested they are motivated by race.
Trump's shows boast a solid African-American viewership and black cast members [and a recent NBC/WSJ poll found, according to NBC's Domenico Montanaro, that the among the groups that views him most positively is African-Americans], some of whom he's likely alienating. "As a people, we celebrated his business acumen; purchased his books and anything else with the Trump name we could get our hands on," Goldie Taylor wrote on The Grio. "Now among African-Americans, the once gilded Trump brand is about as worthless as a plug nickel."
"I'm not calling Trump a racist. But he ought to quit quacking before people start believing he's a duck.," she wrote.
Hank Ernest, who works in public relations in Atlanta and first pointed this dynamic out to me a couple of weeks ago, said he'd stopped watching The Apprentice and, after joking about a boycott on Facebook, been surprised by his friends enthusiasm for the idea.
"I figure that this is Trump’s way of realizing that he won’t get the black vote, so he might as well get all the white vote he can," he said.