Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, recently asked black voters in Michigan whether they had anything to lose by bucking their historical support for the Democratic Party.
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” Mr. Trump asked a mostly white audience outside Lansing.
Speaking on CNN, Mr. O’Malley said the pitch rang hollow, noting that Mr. Trump was slow to renounce support from white nationalist David Duke during the primary campaign. He also said the real estate mogul clumsily lumped all black voters into a single, unflattering package.
“That was a reinforcement of a stereotype about black people, generally,” said Mr. O’Malley, a former mayor of Baltimore who burned out in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary against eventual nominee Hillary Clinton and her main challenger, Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
Similarly, the Clinton campaign accused Mr. Trump of being “completely out of touch with the African American community.”
Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said those attacks were unfair. Democrats have failed to live up to their promises to black voters, he said, so Mr. Trump shouldn’t be attacked for trying to expand the GOP’s reach.
“It is a very good thing for the party, and a very good thing for the country,” said Mr. Lewandowski, who was fired from the Trump campaign in June but has been loyal to the mogul in his new job as a CNN commentator.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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