Daily Mail "Donald Trump told an African-American roundtable meeting on Friday that the Democratic Party is playing 'plantation' politics with blacks in America, according to one of the participants who gave him an atta-boy afterward.
"Daphne Goggins, a Republican leader of Philadelphia's poverty-ridden 16th Ward, recalled Trump's potentially explosive comment after the mid-afternoon downtown event.
" 'What you're saying about the Democratic plan – that plantation that they want black people on? It's the truth. I will say it again,' Goggins told Trump shortly after a group of journalists were allowed in the room for a few minutes.
"A print pool reporter from DailyMail.com noted the comment, which seemed to refer to remarks Trump had made earlier behind closed doors." . . .
. . . But Goggins ended the day – and began it – as a Trump booster.
"She thanked the Republican presidential nominee for coming as the meeting got underway, and wept openly as she spoke.
" 'For the first time in my life I feel like my vote is going to count,' Goggins said through tears.
"Trump lags far behind Democrat Hillary Clinton with black voters, scoring no higher than 15 per cent – and as low as 1 per cent – in national polls that break down participation by race.
"Mitt Romney had the support of just 6 per cent of blacks in the 2012 election, which President Barack Obama, America's first black leader, won easily.
"But Trump is making an appeal for a 180-degree turnaround."
. . . "Conservatives see the GOP as the party of Abraham Lincoln, and regard Democrats as an opportunistic party that take blacks for granted while it delivers negligible results for the poorest among them.
"Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza's documentary 'Hillary's America' makes the argument that crumbling inner cities are the new slave plantations, with impoverished black families dependent on a Democratic Party that uses them as power-pawns and trickles out government benefits to keep them in their place.