Former President Donald Trump's efforts to win over Black voters are superficial, MSNBC's Joy Reid argued Monday, based on flashy promises of money and efforts to take credit for work other people have done.
This comes as Trump faces scrutiny for a campaign event in a Black church in Detroit, where nearly everyone in attendance was white.
"I call it Blaxtroturfing," said Reid. "They're trying to create this fake grassroots movement and trying to lure people in with cash ... listen to Reverend [Lorenzo] Sewell, he got on Fox and got his star turn. Here he is on Fox talking about an economic plan for the Black community."
Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.
"He laid out an agenda, I don't — I can't remember any president, quite frankly, who ever laid out an agenda for Black America," said Sewell. "Our former president, he put together an agenda called the Platinum Plan. Those numbers are approximately $500 billion to disseminate to Black businesses, Black churches, to be able to help the least of these, and those metrics matter to us."
"Wrong. That's Ice Cube that created that. It's an Ice Cube plan," said Reid, turning to Democratic strategist Basil Smikle Jr. "He's now attributing it to Trump to sell Black people on the fact Trump has an economic plan for Black folks. Your thoughts?"
ALSO READ: Attention Lincoln and Reagan: GOP senators scramble history with Trump greatness claim
"Just because you're around Black people doesn't mean you know Black people," said Smikle. "He has this tendency to surround himself with a lot of celebrities, thinking that we, like he, is transactional. That's not how this goes. But he surrounds himself with folks, whether it's pastors or celebrities or others, where he thinks he puts a little money their way or tries to give them a kind of access and thinks that alone is going to drive Black people to the polls. We saw that when he started talking about his sneakers that he was selling, for crying out loud."
"It is incredibly, incredibly insulting and reductive and we know — I'll say this quickly on the economics, if you look at the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, that's everything you need to know economically about Donald Trump and what he's going to do, from cradle to career," Smikle added.
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Joy Reid and Basil Smikle discuss Trump's Black voter outreach www.youtube.com