Republican candidate tells mostly white crowd in Wisconsin that main victims of riots in Milwaukee were ‘law-abiding African American citizens’

Donald Trump has made the most direct appeal of his campaign to African American voters as he battles to offset dismal polling among black voters and draw political capital from a recent spate of racially charged unrest in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Riots broke out in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park area on Saturday after the fatal police shooting of black 23-year-old Sylville Smith, who police said pointed a firearm at an officer after fleeing a traffic stop. The overwhelmingly black neighborhood remained on edge after the city imposed a night curfew, fearing further unrest after arrests and gunfire on Sunday evening.

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Speaking at a rally on Tuesday night in the rural town of West Bend, 30 miles from Milwaukee, Trump, who has branded himself the “law and order candidate”, told an almost exclusively white audience that the rioting was “an assault on the right of all citizens to live in security and to live in peace” – and said black people were the biggest victims of violence in their neighborhoods.

“Law and order must be restored. It must be restored for the sake of all, but most especially for the sake of those living in the affected communities,” Trump said.

“The main victims of these riots are law-abiding African American citizens living in these neighborhoods. It’s their job, it’s their homes, it’s their schools and communities which will suffer the most as a result.”

Trump said he was asking for “the vote of every African American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future”.



“It is time for our society to address some honest and very difficult truths,” he said. “The Democratic party has failed and betrayed the African American community.”

Recent analysis has indicated that Trump is polling at around 2% with the African American electorate – worse than almost every Republican candidate since 1948 – and is even behind the Green party nominee, Jill Stein, and libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, placing him fourth overall among black voters.

Party insiders have begun urging their nominee to increase his outreach in African American communities nationwide. He has done little to court the demographic, most recently rejecting invitations to speak at the annual conventions of the NAACP and the National Association of Black Journalists.

Trump’s rally on Tuesday evening had been scheduled before unrest broke out in Milwaukee but he seized on the opportunity to accuse his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of being “against the police” and suggested she and other Democrats were directly responsible for rioting in the city and others around America.

“Those peddling the narrative of cops as a racist force in our society – a narrative supported with a nod by my opponent – share directly in the responsibility for the unrest in Milwaukee and many other places within our country,” Trump said in a speech that was delivered using a teleprompter.

The billionaire accused Clinton of preferring to “protect the offender [rather] than the victim”, suggested that “a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime and lost opportunities”. He argued that African Americans had been “hurt worst” by Clinton’s immigration policy.

Trump reiterated claims first made during his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention in July, suggesting that “law and order must be restored” amid rising homicide rates in America’s largest 50 cities. Despite this recent rise the rate of violent crime has in fact declined to historic lows under the Obama administration.

The Republican, who had earlier spent time meeting privately with law enforcement leaders in Milwaukee, proposed introducing more police into communities, appointing “the best” prosecutors and judges and pursuing “strong enforcement” of federal laws.

This combative approach, nakedly opposed to the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as Clinton herself, is perhaps unlikely to draw many more black supporters. The protest movement, which rose to prominence after unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, enjoys 65% support among African Americans, according to recent polling; while a survey published in 2015 indicated that Americans’ support for police was at a 22-year low and especially weakened among the African American population.

Trump’s appeals to African American voters received a lukewarm response inside the Washington County Fair Conference Center on Tuesday evening. Many attendees stayed silent throughout much of speech, with some growing visibly bored. The confederate battle flag, to many a lasting symbol of America’s slave-owning history, was on sale outside of the rally.

The Guardian spoke to a dozen rally attendees, all of whom were white, and all of whom lived within a 40-mile radius of the unrest in Milwaukee. Most expressed little if any sympathy for black residents of the city, one of America’s most racially segregated metropolitan areas.

“That’s the way they (black people) are in that city,” said Ken Schladweiler, a 61-year-old from the small rural town of Neosho. “All of that (unrest connected to Smith’s death) was just a case so they could riot, loot buildings. They have no jobs. They’re all on welfare. There are murders down there almost every night. That’s just the way they are.”

His wife, Nancie, 62, agreed: “After all this crap (unrest) happened, I went to work Monday and thought: don’t they (black people) have work? They’re just out there shooting people, blowing up buildings. Don’t they have work?”

Julie Wanie, a 50-year-old healthcare professional who works in Milwaukee, said she simply didn’t visit the Sherman Park neighborhood at all.

“I know it quite well. I know it enough to stay out of that area. Anybody that lives around here and goes to Milwaukee just knows that’s a certain area you stay out of.”

Asked what she thought may have contributed to the rising tensions in the neighbourhood, Wanie replied: “I think Obama has done a lot to incite race wars.”

In an earlier interview with Fox News, Trump had indicated he believed the shooting of Smith on Saturday was a justified response by law enforcement despite no body camera footage of the incident being released.

“… The gun was pointed at his (a police officer’s) head, supposedly ready to be fired. Who can have a problem with that? That’s what the narrative is,” Trump said. “Maybe it’s not true. If it is true, people shouldn’t be rioting.”

While Trump’s hardline law and order stance enjoys support among certain sectors of conservative law enforcement, he has also been criticised by a growing number of progressive reformists.

Just hours before Trump’s speech on Tuesday, Ronal Serpas, the former New Orleans police chief and chairman of Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, issued a pre-emptive statement urging the Republican candidate to drop unfounded claims of a surge in crime.

“Now more than ever it’s important to have level-headed conversations about crime and the vital relationship between law enforcement and the communities we serve. Mr Trump’s recent claims that our country is experiencing a crime wave are highly misleading,” Serpas said.