When he talks to African-Americans, he's really talking to his conservative base.

[DonViejo]

Everyone was wrong. Trump isn’t reaching out to white moderates.

By Paul Waldman September 22 at 1:24 PM

When Donald Trump began his “outreach” to African-Americans, there was a near-unanimous conclusion among journalists and commentators about what Trump was really up to. He couldn’t possibly believe that he’d get support from the most reliably Democratic constituency, so he could only be doing what some Republicans, most notably George W. Bush, had done before him: by making a show of reaching out, he was trying to send a signal to white moderates that he was the kind of reasonable, inclusive candidate they could feel comfortable voting for. But everyone was wrong. Trump wasn’t trying to appeal to white moderates. He was appealing to the same white conservatives who have driven his presidential bid from the very beginning.

Trump’s “outreach” has been full of contempt and insults, demonstrating to his core supporters that the campaign of white nationalism that he has been running since last June, when he debuted his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, has not changed a bit.

You couldn’t get a much better symbol for Trump’s outreach than the town-hall-style interview he has conducted, which will air on Fox News tonight. Billed as a forum on issues of concern to African-Americans, it took place in front of a mostly white audience and was moderated by noted civil rights activist Sean Hannity, who asked hard-hitting questions like, “What does it mean to you to see people of all races and all religions and all backgrounds going to bat for you in this election the way they are?” When one audience member asked him what he would do about “violence in the black community,” Trump responded, “I would do stop and frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well.”

Later in the event, a questioner asked Trump about the epidemic of opiate addiction. Oddly enough, Trump did not suggest using stop-and-frisk in communities affected by this crisis. Somehow, the idea of having the police harass and search huge numbers of random white people as a way of finding those possessing opiates doesn’t strike him as an appropriate response to the problem; instead, he said that the way to solve it is to build a wall on the Mexican border.

-snip-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/22/everyone-was-wrong-trump-isnt-reaching-out-to-white-moderates/?utm_term=.34e583efd1fa&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

[Hortensis]

1. Dog-whistling into the darkness.

[underpants]

2. noted civil rights activist Sean Hannity