Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Dishes On Donald Trump’s ‘Populist’ Approach
From the archive: published Aug 18, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Bill O’Reilly started his show Wednesday night by introducing a clip of Donald Trump talking about African-Americans.
“I’m asking for the vote of every African-American citizen — struggling in our country — who wants a different and much better future. It’s time for our society to address some honest and very difficult truths: The Democratic party has failed the African-American community,” Trump said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3BrQ3JKWdc
Bill O’Reilly noted that Donald Trump was referring to the economic conditions that have not improved for African-Americans under President Obama. He then gave some statistics: Blacks make up 13 percent of the population, but 38 percent of all violent crime arrests are African-American individuals. Bill also noted that African-Americans have the largest high school dropout rate and score lowest among ethnic groups in math and writing on SAT tests.
“Change is not in the air. Blacks and other minorities will go big for Hillary Clinton despite the current state of the union. Will anything change that? No.”
As Politico notes, since Trump is having trouble with minority voters, he faces a huge obstacle in Florida.
“An increase in minority voters poses problem for Trump in Florida. The complexion of Florida’s electorate is becoming browner by the day, and that spells trouble for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as he struggles to attract minority voters.”
The article adds that since the 2012 election, Florida has added 436,000 voters. Some 76 percent of those voters are non-whites, according to new voter registration numbers released in advance of the August 30 primary.
“Well, if you look at the Trump campaign. On the first day of the campaign he insulted a huge portion of the population and it’s been downhill ever since,” happily stated Rev. Jacques Degraff, who was a guest on The O’Reilly Factor.
After Bill O’Reilly asked him if he things Blacks were offended by comments Trump made about illegal immigrants, Degraff said that African-Americans heard the statements and were immediately turned off by them. Degraff condemned Trump’s hostile attitude.
Then, defense attorney Andell Brown appeared on the show.
O’Reilly was frustrated as to why the African-American community couldn’t see why the Democrats haven’t helped them at all.
“One of the things I’ve seen, especially in the area of criminal justice reform is the Fair Sentencing Act, which removed sentencing that disproportionately hurt African-Americans…that was one major thing,” Brown said in response, which followed his suggestion that Obama has helped fix schools for African-Americans — something Bill O’Reilly strongly disagreed with.
Based on polling, it’s unlikely that Donald Trump will attract a decent percentage of minority voters. However, it’s very likely that Bill O’Reilly will continue making the case for Donald Trump.
