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Obama urges Black men to show Harris during his campaign in critical Pennsylvania

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Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, presidential election 2024, theGrio.com

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Former president Barack Obama sharply criticized his successor in the White House Donald Trump and urged Black men to show up Kamala Harris opening a tour of a swing state in exchange for the Democratic ticket.

At a campaign field office to thank volunteers on Thursday, Obama said he wanted to “tell some truths” after hearing reports that there was less enthusiasm for Harris than for his own candidacy and that some black men had thought that to sit outside the elections.

“Part of it makes me think – and I’m speaking directly to men – part of me thinks that, well, you just don’t feel the idea of ​​a woman being president and you come up with other alternatives and for other reasons,” Obama said.

The former president said Trump’s tendency to put people down just isn’t real strength.

“Do you consider sitting down or supporting someone who has slandered you in the past because you’re thinking that it’s an indication of strength and that is what being a person is all about? Demeaning women? This is unacceptable,” Obama said.

Trump responded Friday in a post on his social media, ignoring Obama’s prolonged condemnation of him, suggesting that the previous president could secretly gain his support, and once more insulting Harris.

“Obama admits he shows a complete lack of enthusiasm for Kamala, especially for Black Men,” he wrote. “I think Obama will vote for me because he doesn’t like the fact that Kamala has an extremely low IQ!”

Obama has made battleground Pennsylvania the primary stop of his campaign with lower than 4 weeks until Election Day, and voting has already begun. Speaking at a rally on the University of Pittsburgh, he portrayed Trump as out of touch with reality moderately than someone determined to lead the country into change, calling him a “bumbling” billionaire “who hasn’t stopped complaining about his problems since he came down his golden staircase.” mobile nine years ago.

He said Harris is “a leader who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a chance” and declared: “Kamala is as prepared for this job as any presidential candidate.”

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Obama, out of power for eight years, is certainly one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable surrogates able to excite voters. Until he was elected president in 2020, Joe Biden also served in that role for Democrats, but this 12 months, since he ended his re-election campaign and allowed Harris to win the seat, he has yet to hit the trail.

Obama, who was greeted enthusiastically by the group, described Trump’s all-caps social media posts and his “rants and ravings about crazy conspiracy theories.” Two-hour speeches, word salad, just… it’s like Fidel Castro. Just go on and on. Constantly trying to sell you things. Who does this?”

Obama listed a number of the products Trump tried to sell during his third White House campaign, including Gold sneakers for $399AND A $100,000 watch and him God Bless the USA Bible for $59.99.

“I want you to buy the word of God: Donald Trump edition. “I have his name right next to Matthew and Luke,” Obama said with amusing. -You couldn’t make this up.

The emergence of Obama, the nation’s first black president, underscores the historic nature of Harris’s political profession. Harris, the primary woman, Black or person of South Asian descent to change into vp, might be the primary woman to change into president if elected next month.

Obama’s old campaign slogan, “Yes, We Can,” was even reworked for the event, with “Yes, She Can” displayed on a screen above the group.

Both Harris and Trump are competing for support from Black Americans. AND from the newest survey conducted by the AP-NORC Public Affairs Research Center found that about 7 in 10 black voters have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, with little difference between black female and male voters in their perceptions of the Democratic candidate.

The poll found that black voters’ views of Trump were overwhelmingly negative, but the previous president believed his message on the economy, immigration and traditional values ​​could penetrate Democrats’ traditional base of support amongst black voters, especially younger ones. black men.

Obama acknowledged that the previous couple of years because the pandemic have been difficult for Americans due to high prices and other burdens on working families.

“I understand why people want to shake things up. I mean, I’m a person who hopes to change. So I understand that people feel frustrated and they feel like we can do better,” Obama said. “I can’t understand why anyone would think Donald Trump would shake things up in a way that’s good for you, Pennsylvania.”

He mocked Trump’s response during the controversy that he would replace Obama’s signature health care bill, the Affordable Care Act, with “plan concepts” and his running mate J.D. Vance’s recent remark that Trump was working to “save” the law.

Former President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally in support of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, on the Fitzgerald Field House on the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Matt Freed)

“Donald Trump has spent his entire presidency trying to tear it down. And by the best way, he couldn’t even do this well.

Obama also addressed latest court filing on federal election interference against Trump, who claimed that Trump told an adviser, “So what?” after being told that his vp, Mike Pence, had been taken to a protected location after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t care that a mob might attack his vice president, do you think he cares about you?” he asked.

Glenda Ellison, a 71-year-old retired teacher and Democrat from Pittsburgh, said she was “a little nervous” concerning the election but “praying it goes in our favor.”

Ellison said she sees Obama as a celebration spokesman with a big following who can hopefully sway voters who’re hesitant to vote for Harris.

“As a former president and also a black president, I think this is something that can relate to the African-American community because our black president is actually supporting another black candidate,” said Ellison, who’s black.

Obama was certainly one of the important thing Democrats involved in a behind-the-scenes effort to encourage Biden, his former vp, to drop out of the 2024 race.

Obama and Harris have been friends for twenty years, ever since he ran for the Senate in Illinois. She campaigned for him when he ran for president in 2008.

Pennsylvania is a state that Obama won in his 2008 and 2012 presidential races, but Trump won in 2016. Biden managed to achieve this in 2020, and it looks just like the state might be one of the vital closely contested in this 12 months’s race .

Trump was in the eastern a part of the state on Wednesday to attend rallies in Scranton and Reading. Over the weekend, after returning to Butler, he also campaigned in western Pennsylvania, where he was shot after surviving an assassination attempt in July.

Obama’s appearance on the University of Pittsburgh was also intended to boost the re-election campaign of Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who’s opposed by Trump-backed Republican David McCormick.

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Politics and Current

Trump’s Successor to Four-Star General Lloyd Austin: 44-Year-Old ‘Anti-Wake’ Veteran and Former FOX Host Pete Hegseth

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Lloyd Austin and Pete Hegseth

America’s next defense secretary could also be completely different from any the country has ever seen.

On Tuesday, just in the future after Veterans Day, President-elect Donald Trump chosen 44-year-old Pete Hegseth, a former FOX News commentator and former Army Ranger, to lead one of the crucial powerful military forces on the earth.

Hegseth will succeed Secretary General Lloyd Austin III, the nation’s first Black Secretary of Defense, a historic 2021 selection by President Joe Biden.

Austin, 71, is a four-star general with 41 years of service within the Army. He earned the Silver Star for his leadership within the Iraq War and later, as commander of the United States Armed Forces, oversaw all combat operations in Iraq in addition to military operations in Afghanistan within the 2010s.

Hegseth, a Trump loyalist who previously influenced the previous president to pardon a bunch of military men accused of war crimes, has been outspoken against women serving in combat and critical of what he calls a “woke” military.

“Any general, any admiral, anyone, with ties to DEI or ‘woke’ must go,” Hegseth was quoted as saying on the show latest podcast.

Hegseth can also be a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, universities often criticized by conservatives as bastions of the “liberal elite.” He first served within the Minnesota National Guard, working in finance. A yr later, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay as an infantry platoon leader.

After the Baghdad tour, Hegseth entered politics, forming a conservative group called Vets For Freedom and becoming a television commentator.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – NOVEMBER 16: Host Pete Hegseth speaks on stage in the course of the 2023 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on November 16, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)

Richard Brookshire, Army and National Guard veteran and CEO Black Veterans Projectrespectfully acknowledged Hegseth’s service, which incorporates earning the Bronze Star Medal. However, Brookshire questions the balance between Hegseth’s experience and the seniority required for the position.

Brookshire also noted that DEI efforts, often maligned by conservatives like Hegseth, have played a key role in ensuring that qualified candidates like Secretary Austin are usually not missed.

“I attended the White House Veterans Breakfast the other day, and meeting in person with Secretary Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made me reflect on how they got to their positions – not because they didn’t do a great job, because they absolutely did, but through concerted recruiting efforts in the Black community that began in the 1970s.” Brookshire said. “There has been a commitment to provide pathways that did not previously exist, and now there is an attempt to dismantle those efforts through affirmative action.”

Lloyd Austin, theGrio.com
WASHINGTON – SEPTEMBER 16: Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on ongoing U.S. military operations to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during a hearing within the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, September 16, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Bakari Sellers, a CNN political analyst, echoed the concerns of many Americans about Trump’s recent cabinet selections, but Hegseth particularly.

“People argue about DEI and the lack of qualifications, then rave about Pete Hegseth being put in charge of the most powerful military in the world,” Sells wrote on Twitter. “Watching mediocrity rewarded is a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

The Department of Defense oversees a budget of roughly $842 billion– says the department’s website.

Brookshire expressed concern that with President-elect Donald Trump and a possible defense secretary so hostile to diversity efforts, legitimate issues resembling racial disparities in veterans’ disability compensation will proceed to omitted.

For Black veterans, it could actually be life-changing.

“Sometimes my biggest concern is that the civil rights ecosystem is just not being attentive to the military-industrial complex. And so far as I can see, the veteran ecosystem doesn’t care about black veterans. So nobody is actually going to fill that support gap, Brookshire said.

Hegseth will need to be confirmed by the Senate before he officially replaces Austin as Secretary of Defense.

Harriet Tubman was posthumously commissioned general during a Veterans Day ceremony

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Politics and Current

Op-Ed: Fear of Large Groups of Black Men Voting for Trump Was Misguided and Misplaced – Essence

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Photo: kali9/Getty Images

Before Election Day, headline after headline suggested that enormous groups of Black men didn’t intend to vote or would vote against Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. Following the discharge of exit polls, it is obvious that this fear was misplaced and resulted from misinformation and misinformation. And as we legitimately analyze all of the “hows and whys” the electorate voted the best way they did, it is usually critical that we dispel the parable that almost all Black men were either blithely unaware of their political options or could be easily swayed by misinformation.

2020 exit polls showed that 80% of Black men supported President Joe Biden in 2020. Four years later, polls show that 78% of Black men supported Kamala Harris; a marginal difference of 2%.which is throughout the margin of error and hardly represents a tectonic shift in support for President Trump. In fact, Black men supported Harris greater than another male demographic group — especially in key swing states. In Michigan, for example, nearly 9 in 10 black men voted for Harris, in response to the info exit polls from the Washington Post.. And for the record, 91 percent of black women voted for Vice President Harris.

These results weren’t a shock to me and my team on the stadium Global Black Economic Forum because in our work now we have seen that black men have all the time been part of her support. In fact, we have had rather a lot of discussions on this topic in our virtual voter registration and awareness town halls, Paint the surveys black. And while Black Men are on no account a monolithic voting bloc, Kamala Harris has repeatedly made a powerful case for sustained leadership and economic policies that may improve our lives. The undeniable fact that her candidacy was not successful with a majority of voters shouldn’t be placed on the shoulders of black men. However, many elected officials and pundits have laid the groundwork to position blame on black men if Trump wins. By using racist tropes that Black men fall for every product Trump sells, now we have been used as a crutch to sow discord and spread disinformation.

Every student of history knows that these disinformation campaigns are nothing latest. It’s a convention that dates back to Reconstruction, when former slave owners commonly misled and intimidated Black people into not voting. While the methods and technologies for spreading disinformation have modified and develop into more sophisticated, their intentions haven’t modified. This election cycle, we saw an enormous increase in AI-related images suggesting that Black voters – especially men – supported Donald Trump, when most of these images were false. According to A BBC Panorama reportTrump supporters intentionally targeted black voters with deepfakes showing that black voters support him.

But now that the votes have been counted, we should always take this moment to do not forget that a majority of Black men didn’t give the White House to Trump. We want the chance to construct economic security and wealth, receive inexpensive health care, live in communities that usually are not affected by violence, and live in a rustic where our civil rights are protected.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump proposed a framework that pitted our fight for fair treatment against the search for economic opportunity, as if these concepts were mutually exclusive. And on top of that, he repeatedly attacked Kamala Harris dehumanizing and racist tropes. Trump also went to this point as to suggest that almost all Black people would discover together with his current legal entanglements – dared to check his situation to the racial disparities and injustices that black men face within the criminal legal system. As more polls and analyzes of the election emerge, the decision on this issue is obvious: A majority of black voters paid attention.

Disinformation campaigns proceed. As we move forward, we must make a more concerted effort to know Black male voters — and not only during presidential election season. If we do that, we can have more comprehensive data that reflects what people actually consider and may help us higher thrust back against these false narratives.

Black voters (including Black men) will proceed to be on the front lines, fighting for each economic opportunity and social justice, as we remain unwavering and unwavering in our commitment to fight for each our wallets and our dignity.

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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Donald Trump slammed for proposing ‘restitution’ for Americans harmed by ‘unjust’ DEI policies; Joy Reid, Don Lemon Audible alarm

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onald Trump Slammed for Proposing

It isn’t any secret that Donald Trump’s increased popularity in politics is attributable to the reluctance of white people. The president-elect routinely portrays the MAGA nation as victims of well-educated elites.

“Colleges and universities have received hundreds of billions of dollars from hard-working taxpayers, and now we will rid our institutions of this anti-American madness once and for all,” he said in a video posted Wednesday on several social media platforms. “We will have a real education in America.”

Billed as “payback,” Trump’s plan to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs at U.S. colleges and universities features a provision requiring reparations to those allegedly harmed by measures enacted to offer greater opportunities for marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

onald Trump slammed for proposing 'restitution' for Americans harmed by 'unjust' DEI policies; Joy Reid, Don Lemon Attacks
MSNBC host Joy Reid, President-elect Donald Trump and former CNN host Don Lemon. (Photos: Getty Images)

“In other words, reparations for white people,” said MSNBC host Joy Reid, who never shies away from difficult words and phrases.

However, it’s difficult to query her position. This is confirmed by Trump’s statement on the matter:

“I will further direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination, and schools that continue to engage in blatant, unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their grants taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will file a motion to impose a fine on them in the amount of the entire amount of their equipment. Some of the confiscated funds will then be used to compensate the victims of the illegal and unjust policies that have harmed our country so much.”

Seizing funds after which giving them to “victims of these illegal and unfair policies” is textbook reparations. Trump, nonetheless, opposes reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black individuals who, it needs to be noted, have been victims of centuries of illegal and unjust policies.

When asked about reparations for Black people in 2019, Trump said Hill“I think it’s a very unusual thing. It was a very interesting debate. I don’t see that happening, no.”

Author Keith Boykin, former advisor to President Bill Clinton, sent with an X that it’s clear who Trump thinks is experiencing racial discrimination.

“Trump announces reparations for white people,” Boykin wrote. “He says he will ask the Department of Justice to penalize and fine colleges that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) so he can pay ‘reparations’ to white people whom he considers the true victims of racial discrimination.”

However, compensation for the descendants of slaves stays controversial. In California, the answer was to create an agency to manage funds (that had not yet been put aside) for compensation defeated earlier this yr, and even supporters say it’ll take one other decade for the movement to succeed.

Since Republicans control the Senate and the House, it shouldn’t take Trump that long to push through a reparations plan.

Some X commenters blamed black voters who supported Trump.

“Now imagine you are one of the 12% of black voters who crossed your fingers to vote for Trump.” he said one reader. “Lmao he’s fooling them all.”

Former CNN host Don Lemon also slammed the proposal on social media.

“You voted for this,” Lemon said.

Others saw it as a golden opportunity to talk on behalf of Black people.

“Most black people want to be judged on their merits, not the color of their skin.” he replied one white woman per X. “Not everyone thinks black people should have the bar lowered like you do.”

Trump has proposed wholesale changes to the U.S. education system, including searching for to eliminate the Department of Education, which might give full power to states. Congressional approval is required.


This article was originally published on : atlantablackstar.com
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