Trump claims ‘a great relationship with the blacks,’ but his appeals to nativism tell another story

Donald Trump, Al Sharpton and Don King attend the “Art of the Deal” book party at Trump Tower in New York City in December 1987. (Photo: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)

Donald Trump picked up an endorsement last week — one that, uncharacteristically, he chose not to boast about. It was from David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana state representative, who asserted on his radio show that the Republican frontrunner “understands the real sentiment of America.”

“I think he realizes that his path to popularity toward power in the Republican Party is talking about the immigration issue,” Duke added in a broadcast flagged by BuzzFeed. “And he has really said some incredibly great things recently. So whatever his motivation, I don’t give a damn. I really like the fact that he’s speaking out on this greatest immediate threat to the American people.”

As Trump has galvanized the anti-immigration movement, seizing control of a primary process that was supposed to be about traditional Republican economic and foreign-policy issues, he has begun attracting support from some of the more unsavory elements on the right-wing fringe: neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white-power advocates. The Daily Stormer, described by the New Yorker as “America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site,” endorsed his run within weeks of his announcement. Craig Cobb, who gained national attention in 2013 over a failed plan to set up a whites-only town in North Dakota, has resurrected the idea, and said he would name the place after Trump. And as was widely reported, Trump’s huge rally in Mobile, Ala., last week was greeted with a shout of “white power” from someone in the crowd — a remark that Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, suggested the candidate might not have heard.

White racism and anti-immigrant nativism obviously share some attributes, but they have different policy implications and constituencies that don’t entirely overlap. So could Trump’s enormous magnetism be bringing them together?

Trump himself hasn’t made race an overt issue in his campaign or in his previous flirtations with public office. The consistent theme in his views over the decades has been xenophobia, directed at foreigners he blames for every shortcoming of the American economy — Japan and Germany when he was writing his books in the 1980s, China and Mexico now.

Donald Trump and Mike Tyson at the March of Dimes Gourmet Gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1989. (Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage via Getty Images)

Over the years, though, some of his comments and business practices have raised questions about his, shall we say, commitment to equality. Early in his business career he was sued by the Justice Department, which charged that his company discriminated against minorities in the huge outer-borough real estate empire Trump inherited from his father; the case was settled with a consent decree in which Trump did not admit wrongdoing. One person who knew Trump well in the 1980s said he seemed to have no African-American business associates in those years — except for the boxer Mike Tyson — although that would not have been unusual in the context of the times. He hasn’t disputed a quote, attributed to him in a book by a former colleague, that he didn’t want “black guys counting my money.” He preferred, he said, “little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” African-Americans may not have been reassured by his remarks to a radio interviewer in 2011 that “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

In any case, his campaign this year hasn’t made much of an effort to reach out to minorities. Over the weekend, he said he knows nothing about the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality. “I know nothing about it. I’m seeing lots of bad stuff about it right now,” Trump said in a Fox News interview that Think Progress flagged. He called Democratic presidential nominee Martin O’Malley a “disgusting little weak pathetic baby” for apologizing to activists who took offense at O’Malley’s comment that “black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”

“When I watched that whole thing going on and how they’re pandering … I think it’s a disgrace,” Trump said of the Democratic candidates.

In April 2015, when civil unrest broke out in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, Trump tweeted, “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”

Black Americans have taken notice. Earlier this month, Gallup released a sample of data collected between July 8 and August 8 on each presidential candidate’s favorability among African-American adults.

Gallup data analysts Justin McCarthy and Andrew Dugan said that the real estate magnate is by far the least popular candidate with the black community.

“Hands down, Donald Trump is the candidate who will struggle most among blacks. Trump’s familiarity among blacks is about on par with Clinton’s, but he is deeply disliked. Nearly seven in 10 blacks have an unfavorable view of him — by far the highest negative opinion of any candidate,” McCarthy and Dugan wrote.

Blacks presumably haven’t forgotten that the issue that brought Trump to national political prominence was birtherism, the unfounded speculation that Barack Obama was born in Africa, which was often seen in the 2012 campaign as a proxy for racism.

Trump also publicly doubted whether Obama’s grades were good enough to get into Columbia University or Harvard Law School.

“I heard he was a bad student. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump said to the Associated Press in April 2011. “I’m thinking about it. I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.”

That was widely viewed as both a slur on Obama’s intellect and an attack on affirmative action, implying that the future president benefited from racial preferences. Trump has often boasted about his own college grades, but his campaign has refused requests, including by the conservative website Daily Caller, to release his own transcripts.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, addresses an audience of students and the public at Macalester College, Friday, Sept. 21, 2012 in St. Paul, Minn. (Photo: Jim Mone/AP)

Former Republican New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, did not mince words last month when discussing Trump’s appeal and its potential consequences for the GOP.

“He is appealing to a segment that I’ll just label racist. And it exists, and it’s out there. You know what? I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” Johnson said in an interview with libertarian magazine Reason. “It embarrasses me. The electorate will paint the entire Republican Party with a broad brush as a result of Trump, and it won’t be positive.”

Trump’s incendiary speech and success in the polls have relegated former political stars to the sidelines. Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s brashness, which once felt refreshing to disaffected conservatives tired of “typical politicians,” now seems downright pedestrian to the legions of Trump converts.

In an apparent attempt to regain traction, several of the business tycoon’s Republican rivals, including Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, have waded into divisive discussions with increasingly radical comments.

Republican strategists fear that Trump’s immigration streak will irrevocably alienate the nation’s growing demographic of Hispanic voters from the party.

“Party elites can already envision the attack ads of sad-eyed children being torn from their parents,” politics reporter Molly Ball writes in the Atlantic. “The harsh immigration rhetoric doesn’t only offend Latino voters, they say — it hurts the party with other minority groups, with moderates and independents, with young voters and with women.”

Ben Domenech, conservative commentator and publisher of the Web magazine the Federalist, said Trump has tapped into widespread anger that could transform the party.

“Ultimately,” Domenech writes, “Trump presents a choice for the Republican Party about which path to follow: a path toward a coalition that is broad, classically liberal, and consistent with the party’s history, or a path toward a coalition that is reduced to the narrow interests of identity politics for white people.” The voters will get to decide, and a lot is riding on the outcome.

When contacted by Yahoo News, a Trump spokesperson declined to address various issues affecting the African-American community or Duke’s comments.