PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump was met with tears and gratitude as he sat with African-American supporters Friday, including the mother of a young woman who was killed in an attack by a group that included men who had entered the U.S. illegally.
The back-to-back meetings in a ballroom in Northwest Philadelphia underscored the balancing act the Republican nominee is playing as he tries to expand his support in the race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. While Trump works to broaden his appeal among more moderate and minority voters, he’s also working to maintain his popularity with his core GOP base by pressing his hard-line views on immigration.
At an invitation-only roundtable discussion, Trump met with a dozen local business, civic and religious leaders who praised him for coming to “the hood” as part of his outreach efforts. Trump was warmly received by the group, including Daphne Goggins, a local Republican official who wiped away tears as she introduced herself to Trump. “For the first time in my life,” she told him, “I feel like my vote is going to count.”
Renee Amoore, a local business leader, assured Trump that he has support in the black community, despite his low standing in public opinion surveys.
“People say, Mr. Trump, that you have no African-American support. We want you to know that you do,” she said. “We appreciate you and what you’ve done, coming to ‘the hood,’ as people call it. That’s a big deal.”
But Trump’s meeting also highlighted the challenges he faces making inroads with African-Americans and Latinos. Protesters gathered in front of the building where Trump appeared, and a coalition of labor leaders met nearby to denounce Trump’s outreach to black voters as disingenuous and insulting.
Ryan Boyer of the Labor District Council said Trump “has no prescription to help inner-city America.”
“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior,” Boyer said. “He did nothing for African-Americans in 30 years of public life. We reject his notion that we have nothing to lose by supporting him.”
The next stop for Trump is Detroit, where blacks make up some 83 percent of the population. He’s expected to visit a church with a predominantly black congregation there today.
Public opinion surveys show Clinton polling far ahead of Trump with minority voters.
Trump continues to take a hard-line stance on illegal immigration, the dangers of which he highlighted Friday. He met with Shagla Hightower, whose daughter, Iofemi, was killed in a 2007 attack in a Newark, N.J., schoolyard.
Shalga Hightower said her daughters’ killers “should have never been here” and praised Trump for giving her daughter recognition.
At his events, Trump has been featuring parents whose children have been killed by people living in the U.S. illegally.
Hightower’s story is “a horrible story,” Trump said, “but it’s a story a lot of people are going through.”
“Tremendous numbers, tens of thousands of people, are being affected,” he claimed.
Studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
