Jason Riley: Trump Did Nothing During Debate To Help His Standing With Women and Minority Voters

DonaldTrump_wikiJason Riley, author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed and Wall Street Journal columnist, penned an op-ed about the recent presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He was critical of Trump’s performance.

“You must show people that you have the knowledge and temperament for the job…You know that average voters aren’t the only ones who remain skeptical of your qualifications. So are your peers. Top business executives at the nation’s largest companies backed Mitt Romney in 2012 but are sitting out this year’s campaign or supporting Mrs. Clinton. Well-regarded national security experts, such as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, are also skeptical. Mr. Gates described you in these pages as “stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform.” You know that the first debate will draw tens of millions of viewers and provide the best opportunity between now and the election to prove the doubters wrong.”

Riley also didn’t like Trump’s demeanor. He “looked and sounded frighteningly unprepared.” He rolled his eyes, shifted his weight, and seemed impatient. He was rambling and incoherent.

“The one thing everybody already knows about Donald Trump is that he’s very rich, yet the candidate couldn’t stop reminding us of this fact throughout the evening and no matter the context. Asked about recent racial unrest following police shootings around the country, he began, ‘When I look at Charlotte, a city that I love, a city where I have investments . . . .'”

What about on-the-fence or undecided female and black voters?

“Mr. Trump did nothing Monday to help his standing with the women and minority voters who are likely to decide the election. When confronted with past sexist remarks, he remained silent or said the women ‘deserved’ it. Democrats deserve criticism for their treatment of black voters, but it’s hard to take it seriously coming from a man who seems to have discovered black America about 15 minutes ago. Someone on Team Trump ought to inform the candidate that the vast majority of black people in the U.S. are neither unemployed nor living in poverty.”

Do you agree with Riley’s assessment of Trump’s debate performance?

Photo credit: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

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2 comments

  1. how come more black republicans aren’t relaying this message to Trump? when asked at the debate about how to heal racial strife, he talks about law and order and making POTUS release his birth certificate.. talk about tone deaf.. i’m no HRC fan, but Trump will NEVER get my vote with his attitude..

  2. I’m an eighty-year-old refugee from Chicago, the president’s “home town,” sanctuary city, union city and Democratic bastion. Also home to some of the world’s best trauma surgeons who managed to save over 2,000 lives this year alone. I’m also old enough to remember a vibrant black community that I was probably safer in as a child than in my own. My family home was close to the area where MLK marched, and I lived there until my family was no longer safe in the middle of the shooting gallery that my neighborhood became in the turf wars between the black and Hispanic gangs that plagued the once quiet south side of the city.

    I have not been a fan of Donald Trump, and yes, he speaks awkwardly, but I will vote for him because I believe he may grow into the job. We elected a virtual unknown the last time around whose only claim to fame was getting his rival’s records unsealed before sealing his own and the ability to read from a teleprompter. Chicago and its minority neighborhoods have benefited nothing from Mr. Obama’s presidency. The city may not benefit from a Trump presidency, either, and what you see is what you get but politically, he is an unknown quantity and may make a positive difference. Mrs. Clinton is anything but transparent, a known political quantity who will just drag this country down further.

    A