CHRIS HAYES (HOST): When it comes to wooing black voters, Trump has his work cut out for him. After first demanding the President of the United States produce his papers, then launching his campaign with a slur about Mexican immigrants, calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country and failing to promptly reject support from avowed white supremacists, among other offenses, the Republican nominee has support from just 17 percent of non-white registered voters overall in the latest NBC News poll. Among African-Americans, he's at a rock bottom one percent. On top of his bigoted remarks, Trump dismisses issues like criminal justice reform and voting rights, which are high priority for many black voters, instead discussing voter fraud and crime in coded terms.
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While he's tried to deliver a somewhat more inclusive message over the past week, Trump sent a very different signal by hiring Steve Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, as his new campaign CEO. The site known for bigoted attacks on immigrants, Muslims, and African-Americans, among others. Revealingly the website even has a discreet tag for articles related to quote, unquote “black crime.” Bannon embraces the organization's racial politics proudly telling Mother Jones, “we're the platform for the alt-right,” a term which is a new, more politicallly correct term for white supremacists in the digital age. So when Donald Trump promises to get 95 percent of the black vote after 4 years in office, even his running mate, Mike Pence can't take him seriously.
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Many observers have noticed that Trump's pitch to African-Americans has been delivered to almost all white audiences, suburban Wisconsin, in Michigan and on Fox News. It's not for lack of opportunity, in fact Trump has turned down invitations to address predominantly black audiences including from the NAACP and the national Association of Black Journalists.
