As campaign heats up, Trump woos Latino and black voters

With less than 40 days to go before the election, President Donald Trump unveiled his second policy plan on the same days that he tried to undermine support for his Democratic rival among black and Hispanic voters and in key states in the field. battle.

At a “Black Voices for Trump” event in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump announced what his campaign called a “Platinum Plan” outlining his “promise to black America” ​​if he won a second term, including a push for economic development and loans. and the commitment to designate June 16 as a federal holiday.

June 19th, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, is so named because June 19, 1865, is when slaves were freed in Galveston, Texas.

The announcement came during a two-day campaign change that ticked off a long list of boxes, both geographically and with key constituencies. He released what his advisers called a “vision” for healthcare in North Carolina, where polls show that he and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are effectively tied. He held a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, one of the most contested battle states. He courted Hispanic voters near Miami and black voters in Atlanta. And he held another rally Friday night in Newport News, Virginia. Biden is far ahead of Trump in that state, but the location is close to key North Carolina counties that are difficult for the president to visit, according to the campaign, because not all airports can accommodate Air Force One and its requirements. landing.

Trump has tried to contrast his busy schedule with that of Biden, who has made only 12 visits outside of Delaware since he chose Kamala Harris of California as his running mate on Aug. 11, troubling some Democrats with his low-key approach.

Trump complained in Atlanta that Biden “never goes out!” and said losing the November 3 election would be even worse if he lost to a man who never campaigns.

Trump also made rare references to recent killings of black men and women by police, which have sparked mass protests across the country. Trump said the nation mourns the “senseless” deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, as he continues to lash out at protesters.

“Our hearts break for their families and for all the families who have lost a loved one … But we can never allow the mafia to rule,” he said, denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement. “This is an unusual name for an organization whose ideology and tactics are now destroying many black lives,” Trump charged.

The plan unveiled on Friday included a long list of promises, with few details on how they would be paid or kept.

“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.” He said. The plan also calls for expanding opportunity zones, designating the Ku Klux Klan and antifa as terrorist organizations and creating a national clemency project to “correct unfair prosecutions and forgive people who have reformed.”

Trump claimed that Democrats like Biden take black voters “for granted.”

“He doesn’t know African Americans like me,” added Trump, who has a history of making racist comments.

Biden responded in a statement before Trump spoke.

“As president, I will work to promote racial equity in the American economy and build back better,” he said. “I pledge to fight for black working families and direct real investments to promote racial equity as part of our nation’s economic recovery.”

Biden also pointed to the nearly 6,800 Georgians who have died from the coronavirus, which has disproportionately affected black and Hispanic communities, as well as Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

On Thursday, Trump unveiled a “vision” of health care more than three and a half years into his presidency and signed an executive order that included a commitment to protect people with pre-existing medical conditions from insurance discrimination, although that right it already exists. Guaranteed in the Obama-era healthcare law, his administration is asking the Supreme Court to repeal it.

In Virginia, on Friday, it said it would extend a moratorium on offshore drilling to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. But then he told the rally crowd: “If you want to have oil rigs, let me know, we’ll take it off.”

Trump has been campaigning with little regard for the virus, which has now killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. At the Atlanta event, there was no social distancing effort, even though nearly half of the ballroom where the event took place was empty. His rally in Newport News on Friday night drew thousands of followers despite the rainy weather most of the day; most did not wear masks.

On Friday morning, at his golf club in Doral, Florida, Trump tried to curb support for Biden among Hispanic voters at a “Latinos for Trump” roundtable. The Trump campaign is increasingly confident that its support is growing with the demographic, including in Florida, one of the most competitive battlefields of 2020, where elections are often won by a single percentage point.

An NBC-Marist poll of Florida voters released earlier this month found that Latinos in the state were evenly split between Biden and Trump, a major change from the same 2016 poll, when Democrat Hillary Clinton led Trump by a margin of 59% to 36%. But a Monmouth University poll also conducted this month found Biden far ahead of Trump among Latino voters in the state, 58% to 32%. Due to growing concern that Biden’s position is slipping, the campaign has embarked on an urgent effort to try to shore up support among older voters, the suburbs and African Americans to try to make up for losses elsewhere.

Hispanic voters in Florida tend to be slightly more Republican than Hispanic voters nationwide due to the state’s Cuban-American population, which Trump acknowledged several times in his comments.

– AP