President Donald Trump returned to Iowa in a desperate attempt to shore up support for Republican candidates who shouldn’t need any help at all in a state as ruby red as Iowa.
But in a weird rant during his campaign speech, he may have alienated Black voters as he once again fixated on skin color.
Trump went to Dubuque Sunday, with just two days to go before the crucial midterm elections, when, in the middle of his speech at the Five Flags Center, he veered off script.
The president suddenly began musing about what to call Black people.
“If you’re Black, if you’re African-American, I say to a lot of my Black friends, ‘Let me ask you would you prefer to be called African-American or Black?’ And it’s pretty much a mix. In other words, you’re in trouble no matter what you do,” Trump stunningly said out of the blue while surrounded by his white MAGA faithful.
The bizarre detour left more than a few people scratching their heads. Critics quickly noted that Trump has never once wondered aloud what to call white people or brown people. White or Caucasian? Brown or Latino?
But he wasn’t finished.
“I say, ‘Well should I say Black? Yes.’ Then I’ll be with another. ‘No, I like African-American better.’ So, no matter what you do, but it doesn’t matter,” he groused, tying himself in knots.
The internet wasted no time.
“Racist old man rants racist garbage as Republicans cheer,” one X user fired back.
“The Buffoon is getting worse. He has no such friends,” another wrote.
A third couldn’t get past the premise: “The racist has ‘Black friends’?”
Then came the reply that cut through the whole rambling bit and left Trump with egg on his face.
“You call them the same thing you call your white friends…..BY THEIR NAME!!!!”
Trump’s racist tendencies are well-known. He’s been called out repeatedly by public figures, civil rights organizations, and even family members over his use of racist language and his discriminatory policies. He and his supporters have consistently denied this.
Yet Trump has spent the last month calling Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed every name in the book, from Muhammad and jihadist to terrorist and Muslim Brotherhood member. None of his name-calling has any basis in fact.
Just last week at a campaign event in Florida, he once again delineated his so-called friends along ethnic lines.
“I have a friend; he’s Jewish. He said, ‘What do you think I should do in Michigan?’ I said, ‘Are you stupid?’ He’s not voting for Abdul,” Trump ranted.
The president then rambled about his other friend who is Black. “He said, ‘What do you recommend?’ I said, ‘I recommend you go, Republican.’ He said, ‘OK, that’s what I’m going to do!’”
Trump twisted the knife a few seconds later by speaking directly to voters.
“If you’re Black or if you’re Jewish and you vote for Abdul, you’re not smart. And I’m being nice,” Trump said brazenly.
Those remarks followed another outburst, this time at a rally in South Carolina.
“If you’re Black or if you’re Jewish and if you vote for Abdul, you’re crazy, OK, you’re crazy,” Trump ranted.
Then he insultingly added, “You’re crazy anyway.”
Tuesday’s midterm will determine control of Congress, where Republicans hold only a razor-thin majority in the House and where the Senate is now in play after what opponents call Trump’s disastrous two years in office.
