JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): So you know, Gene, through this entire process, whether it's this pastor, a good man I'm sure, or Donald Trump in the way he speaks to black audiences.
EUGENE ROBINSON: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: It's been ham-fisted. I think the shame for me as a Republican is they actually have an argument to make. You can go into inner cities, and you can go in and say, “OK, there's been democratic rule here for 50 years. What has it brought you? Why don't we try a better way? You deserve a better way, and here is my plan.” And then they present a plan.
ROBINSON: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: That's actually a very -- I think that's a fair argument to make, and we can have a great argument. But it's always on this shallow level from Donald Trump and his surrogates. And it comes across very ham-fisted and offensive to black people and to Hispanics.
ROBINSON: It would have to deepen considerably to be considered shallow, right? I mean it's just glancing. It's not -- it goes nowhere. What's missing is any sense of participation and any invitation to participation on the grassroots, the way African-Americans have participated for decades on the grassroots in the Democratic Party. So when you talk about African-Americans in the pastor's lexicon living under democratic rule, well in fact, the Democratic party is -- a big chunk of the Democratic party is African-Americans who are elected officials at every level, including president of the United States, but down through the levels of the party, who are party activists at every level, who are contributing to the making of policy and that is not replicated in the Republican Party.
