So that was weird

Donald Trump spent millions of dollars on a Super Bowl ad which made false claims about how he’s supposedly helped African Americans. He then posted a tweet congratulating the wrong state for winning the game, and that alone drowned out any media coverage he might have gotten for his expensive ad. But he’s clearly not done pushing this particular narrative.

This evening Donald Trump tweeted this quote about himself: “This President has done more for African Americans in this Country than any President since Lincoln.” The trouble is that the quote came from Lou Dobbs, who used to be a CNN host, but he said way too many racist things about immigrants, so now he’s a Fox News host.

I don’t know about you, but if I want to know how black people feel about Donald Trump, I’ll start by asking black people, not by asking some notorious white racist. This kind of crap usually only serves to further alienate nonwhite voters. Of course that’s not what Trump is really trying to do here.

Donald Trump is trying to convince conservative white people that he’s good for black people, so that conservative white people can feel good about voting for him. The trouble for Trump is that’s he’s merely continuing to pander to his existing supporters, when his weak approval rating numbers make clear that he has to find a way to broaden his popularity. If he ever tried doing right by nonwhite Americans, instead of just pandering to them while invoking policies aimed at screwing them over, he get might more votes from them. But that just wouldn’t be his style.