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RUSH:  One of the many things Trump did in a series of speeches recently is make an appeal to African-American voters.  Now, this is something that Republicans have been urging Republican leaders to do frequently.  It’s implicitly rooted in the fact that if the Democrats could just be forced to lose 10% of African-American vote, that it would seriously damage the Democrats’ presidential aspirations.  They routinely get 90 to 93% of the African-American vote, and it’s assumed that there’s nothing to be done. 

But yet there are often calls, and have been for decades, for Republicans to make an appeal.  And there have been several.  Jack Kemp’s enterprise zones. He actually went to urban neighborhoods to pitch various plans/proposals that would facilitate the building and creation of black small businesses, selling entrepreneurism and so forth.  And there have been others that have made efforts to convince African-Americans that they’re wasting their vote with the Democrat Party. 

I don’t recall anybody doing it the way Trump is doing it.  The way Trump is doing it is to just look at them and say, “What have you been getting for it?” I’m gonna use my own words to convey the same message that Trump tried to get across, which is, “You have been voting for the Democrat Party for 50 years, and every four years you have voiced the same complaints, the same injustices, the same racism, the same unfairness, the same stacked deck.

“And yet after all of these years and after all these Democrats be elected, you still complain about the same things, and your life circumstances simply haven’t improved. Look at black teenage unemployment, look at black adult unemployment.” So Trump mentions all this in his own way and says, “What have you got to lose by voting for me, ’cause how much worse can it get?”  It’s an intriguing appeal, and I think it’s effective by virtue of the Democrat media reaction to it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I like the way Trump made his pitch for African-American votes, and, I’ll tell you, it’s effective.  And the reason I know it’s effective is not because of anything I’ve heard from the African-American community.  I’ve heard and read media reaction to it.  They are loaded for bear.  They are outraged that Trump would make an appeal to African-American voters. 

And then you know what I saw?  I wish I would have printed this out.  I was really Hoovering news, I was trying to make up, I’ve been off the grid for a couple days, and this was Saturday, and I forget where I saw this. It’s not necessary for anybody to go out and find it.  A series of stories, there might have been two stories written by Drive-By reporters trying to make the case that, “Hey, life in America isn’t that bad for African-Americans.” 

And I said, “Well, this is new.”  It seems to me that every bit of reporting on African-Americans is that it’s one of the worst things that could happen to you, is to be black in America.  And that’s been the tenor of the coverage of African-American news and stories my entire life.  Filled with sympathy and sorrow and, oh, the discrimination and the racism and the historical precedents of slavery and all these horrible, rotten things that America’s guilty of, making it practically impossible to be African-American in America. And Trump comes out and makes a direct appeal to them, and then they just do a 180 and start saying, “Well, you know, black unemployment’s not that bad.” 

And they start citing middle class income figures, home ownership statistics to try to indicate that, hey, it isn’t that bad for African-Americans.  Isn’t this fascinating?  Where’s this story been for 50 years?  Life for African-Americans in America not bad at all.  You’ve never seen that until Trump makes his pitch.  And what he said is what the hell do you have to lose?  You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed.  What the hell do you have to lose? 

By the way, these are not things he’s made up.  These are statistical truths, and they oftentimes are complaints that you actually hear from the mouths of African-American leaders like the Reverend Jackson or Al Sharpton.  I mean, they’re the ones promulgating this stuff.  They’re the ones that need there to be this perception that life for African-Americans is the dregs, and of course the reason for that is racism and bigotry and discrimination, thereby needing the race industry to defend these African-Americans against this onslaught of unfairness that is intrinsically baked into the United States of America’s existence.  And then Trump comes along, and I think it’s a reasonable appeal. 

Now, what Trump didn’t say that I think is implied here when he says you’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed, he talks about immigration. That’s not gonna help any of these circumstances with all these illegal immigrants and refugees pouring into the country.  And then the Democrats turning their attention on new favorites such as gays and lesbians and bisexual, transgenders and so forth, taking the African-American vote for granted.

But the point is that the implied message of what Trump says is that the circumstances that blacks and their leaders complain about haven’t changed.  In fact, you could possibly accurately say that there’s more anger in America today than there was 10 years ago, certainly more than there was eight years ago.  There is more anger in this in country than there was eight years ago.  There hasn’t been any resolution to that.  There hasn’t been any unity. There hasn’t been any softening of tensions, relaxing of tensions.  It’s gotten worse, the exact opposite of what people hoped would result from electing the first African-American president, Barack Hussein O. 

So the implied question is, you’ve been voting for the Democrat Party your entire life and for the entire life of your grandparents, and you’re still complaining about the same things, and you’re right.  You’re still living in poverty, inner city schools are the dregs, African-American unemployment is double or triple what the national rate is, and it’s 58% for youth African-American. 

So where is all of this improvement?  Where are the results of the Democrat Party looking out for you?  Thus the question, what the hell do you have to lose?  I have always thought an appeal like that would — I’ve never heard that appeal.  The appeals that I have seen made by Republicans, I mean, they’re good, they’re admirable, I mean, they do contain and consist of personal outreach. 

Jack Kemp actually went out to African-American neighborhoods all over the country and pitched his enterprise zones, which was basically a government program designed to promote black entrepreneurism leading to black small businesses, leading to black independence.  ‘Cause that was the objective. 

I mean, the conservative Republican objective is independence from government for everybody, not dependence on government. 

The message is that dependence on government has led to perpetual poverty.  Dependence on government has led — I mean, who’s running the schools?  Who runs all of these cities with all of these dilapidated schools and dilapidated city services?  Who’s been running them for years?  It’s a legitimate pitch.  It’s a legitimate outreach that needs to be made more than once, and of course each time it’s made, the media is going to savage Trump and savage the effort, and they’re gonna fact check it, and they’re gonna report that Trump is lying about how horrible circumstances are for African-Americans. 

But it’s this very media which has been telling us this story for all 50 years about how impossible life for blacks in America is and how it’s continually getting worse. How racism is getting worse, discrimination is getting worse, white privilege is now — it’s got to the point now where white students on college campus have been so guilted, they have been ladled with so much guilt over being white that they are suggesting it would be wrong to have white roommates, they don’t want that, because there’s too much white privilege. They have benefited unfairly. They feel appropriately guilty. All of this has been done by the Drive-By Media and the professors, the entire liberal culture spreading this word. 

So I find it fascinating that when Trump makes his pitch, the media comes out and immediately starts reporting stories, “Hey, it’s okay in the black communities.  Life is okay for African-Americans.  It isn’t nearly as bad as Trump said.”  Well, you can’t have it both ways.  So we’ll see.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  By the way, one more thing on Trump’s appeal to African-American voters. Hillary, of course, pooh-poohed it. She thought it was insane, stupidest thing she’s ever seen.  The Drive-By Media is suggesting… The Washington Post: “It’s Hard to Imagine a Much Worse Pitch Donald Trump Could Have Made for the Black Vote.” Did you hear what CNN tweeted?  “Trump wants GOP to court black voters, then slams voting rights for felons.”

Now, you might not notice anything about that if you race through that, if you just read this headline. But what does this headline actually indicate?  What does it show?  That in the eyes of CNN, all felons happen to be black.  So where is the racism here?  “Trump wants GOP to court black votes and then slams voting rights for prisons.” So CNN is attempting to say Trump’s lying or Trump’s a hypocrite. Because over here, Trump is saying, “Hey, let’s make a pitch and get the African-American vote.”

And then he wants to deny felons the right to vote. 

Well, in the eyes of CNN, it must be that all felons are black.  It’s not Trump that said it.  That’s CNN’s reaction.  Of course, others, in the Drive-By Media picked that up and ran with it — once again, illustrating that the racism in this country is institutionally found on the left.  That’s who looks at people and judge them by the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. It’s just amazing.  Anyway, let’s start on the phones here so we get that done. Mike in Lansing, Michigan.  Hello, sir, are you there?

CALLER:  I was at the Trump rally in Dimondale. There were blacks in the audience, and the mile walk between the parking space and the sports complex there were blacks selling all sorts of Trump stuff from one end to the other, and everyone was happy — people in the audience — for what Trump had said to the blacks. They were in tears and happy to hear it, because if you go to Detroit, that’s exactly what you see, is the blacks who are being screwed by the Democrat Party for the last 50 years at least.  And they have no voice at all in their futures at all.

RUSH:  So let me… You’re talking in Lansing and in Detroit, you’re seeing a lot of African-American support for Trump?

CALLER:  No, not in the cities themselves.  I don’t know that.  But I’m just saying what I saw when I was at the rally, that the people outside were happy. The people in the audience — there were about 4,000 people — were happy with what Trump said, with every point he made.  And when I was in Detroit, the white people left the city because there were no jobs, and the people who were left had no jobs. And the schools, as you already know, nationally are in the tank. End the education department is doing nothing to change that. We owe that to Democrats, and the blacks are the ones who are suffering from it in Detroit and in Lansing as well.

RUSH:  Yes, but it’s the Democrats that keep getting elected there.  That’s the point here. 

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