If you watched Donald Trump‘s televised speech Tuesday night in Phoenix, Arizona, then you saw a supporter known as “Michael the Black Man,” who was firmly planted just behind the president’s right shoulder.
He held the sign, “BLACKS FOR TRUMP,” and wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist” at the event at the convention center.
The Washington Post points out that the supporter, who has a checkered past, has attended several rallies over the year. In the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted with conspiracy to commit two murder, the Post writes:
The presence of Michael — variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel — has inspired not only trending Twitter hashtags but a great deal of curiosity and Google searches. Internet sleuths find the man’s bizarre URL, a easily accessible gateway to his strange and checkered past.
The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult, and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama “The Beast” and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah Winfrey, he says, is the devil.
Given the recent events in Charlottesville, Twitter reacted swiftly to seeing a Black man stumping for a president, who waxed nostalgic about statues that pay homage to men who fought to keep Blacks enslaved in the U.S.
https://twitter.com/SarahTheNasty/status/900193073170350080
https://twitter.com/Gambian_Chick/status/900184447575879680
But Trump supporters were happy to see Michael the Black Man.
What do you think about the president’s speech? Sound off in comments.
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Trump Delivers Divisive Speech Devoid Of Facts In Phoenix
Just days after trying to clean up his mess following the Charlottesville, Virginia, terror attacks, Donald Trump delivered an angry, divisive speech devoid of facts to supporters at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona.
Here are some Twitter reactions to his comments:
Police released pepper spay on a crowd of anti-Trump protesters after the rally.
Trump’s Afghanistan Speech Was Really About Charlottesville
President Trump doubled down last week after coming under fire for failing to condemn violence by neo-Nazis and White supremacists in Charlottesville. For a man who never admits a mistake, the president clearly tried–in his strange way–to clean up his mess.
In a televised speech Monday night, on the way forward in a nearly 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, president Trump opened oddly with remarks about unity and healing, clearly his way of admitting that he mishandled Charlottesville.
After noting the diversity of our troops, Trump said they should not have to return home from war to a country that is “at war with itself.”
“We cannot remain a force for peace in the world if we are not at peace with each other,” he said to a military audience at Fort Myer, Virginia.
What’s behind this—at least temporary—change of heart?
Perhaps it’s the new poll, which found that just 28 percent of Americans approved of how he handled Charlottesville. Perhaps it’s the widespread criticism, even from within his party, of his unwillingness to condemn neo-Nazis.
On Monday, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan condemned the president’s remarks on Charlottesville, in which Trump placed anti-racism counterprotesters on the same moral plane as White supremacist groups.
“I do believe that he messed up in his comments on Tuesday when it sounded like a moral equivocation or at the very least moral ambiguity when we need extreme moral clarity,” Ryan told CNN, referring to the president’s news conference at Trump Tower.
Whatever the case, we’ve been on this ride before with President Trump. After reading a prepared speech, in which he sounds reasonable, Trump reverses himself and shows his true colors.
CNN said we may find out on Tuesday during the president’s campaign-style rally in Phoenix “whether Trump can possibly keep up this call to our better angels.”
Even if he doesn’t fall off the rail in Phoenix, the network said he still has a long way to go toward convincing “a deeply skeptical public that he is a uniter, not a divider.”
SOURCE: CNN
SEE ALSO:
Donald Trump Promotes Police Brutality During Speech
Trump’s Plan For The Blacks Even More Elusive After State Of Union Address
