July 13, 2016

Donald Trump Can “Relate” to Black People Because He’s a Victim Too

“Well, I have been saying even against me the system is rigged.”


Donald Trump may have described the Black Lives Matter movement as “divisive” and suggested demonstrators might deserve to “get roughed up,” but he wants African Americans to know that he can relate to their struggle. After all, the system has been unfair to him too.

“Well, I have been saying even against me, the system is rigged—we have to fight,” Trump said when asked by Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday about what he would do to heal the country amid heightened racial tensions. “We have to fight.”

“No, what I’m saying is that they’re not necessarily wrong,” Trump responded when O’Reilly commented that his remarks about fighting weren’t uplifting. “I can really relate it really very much to myself.

The real estate magnate has been railing against the Republican nominating process ever since it briefly appeared as if Sen. Ted Cruz could secure more delegate support despite Trump winning more of the popular vote. Of course, that never transpired and Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

Trump’s mind-boggling analogy and clumsy attempt to pander to African Americans comes amid his disastrous polling numbers from minority groups and young people who believe he is a racist.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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