Did Donald Trump just accidentally express empathy for black people?

By Nidhi Prakash  |  July 18, 2016 | 2:07pm
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As the Republican National Convention kicks off in Cleveland, Ohio, today, Donald Trump called in to Fox News’ morning show, Fox & Friends, to say that “there’s something going on” with Obama’s response to attacks on police officers, the day after three officers were killed in Baton Rouge, La.

By the end of the interview, he seemed to agree on one of the issues at the core of the Black Lives Matter movement: that black people are unfairly targeted by police.

“I mean, you know, I watched the president and sometimes the words are OK,” he began. “But you just look at the body language. There’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on and the words are not often OK, by the way.”

Host Steve Doocy replied, looking a little perplexed, “What does that mean, there’s something going on?”

“There’s just a bad feeling, a lot of bad feeling about him,” Trump continued. “I see it, too. There’s a lot of bad feeling about him. We have a country that has not been like this since I can remember it.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has referred to “something going on” with the president, implying that Obama has some mysterious, nefarious agenda. In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre, he said, “There’s something going on—it’s inconceivable. There’s something going on. He doesn’t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.”

After saying there’s “something going on” with Obama, the presumptive Republican nominee went on to vaguely agree with recent comments from Newt Gingrich and black Republican Senator Tim Scott that black Americans are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement officers. Trump even seemed to suggest that police officers could be trained better to try to address that problem.

Doocy brought up Gingrich and Scott’s comments and asked Trump, “Is there something on the other side that needs to be addressed too?”

Trump: It’s probably something we don’t know and maybe we can’t feel it unless we’re black. There’s something to do with training and something… it’s an experience, there’s no question about that.
Steve Doocy: How do you address the issues of African Americans in America if you’re a white man?
Trump: You have to see and you have to put yourself in their position and you have to see what’s going on…

In his own incoherent way, it sounds a lot like Trump just agreed with Black Lives Matter.

 
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