“If you care about our legacy, realize everything we stand for is at stake”, Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, said in an address to an annual dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016, in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“And to think with just 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that thing resolved”, Obama said to laughter from the predominantly African American audience.
President Barack Obama urged the African-American community to help stop Donald Trump, saying he would consider it a “personal insult” to his legacy if black voters did not back Hillary Clinton. “You want to give me a good send-off, go vote”. Trump has spent much of the past month making overt attempts to reach out to black voters, often describing their lives in apocalyptic terms.
He turned quite serious when speaking about voting.
“That’s not good. That is on us”, Obama said. “We will educate him”. “It matters. We’ve got to get people to vote”.
On Trump’s quest to win over African-American voters, Obama quipped, “Well, we do have challenges, but we’re not stupid”. Police say that soon after, he re-entered the hotel and refused the hotel management’s demands for him to leave, saying they would have to arrest him. Clinton did not mention Trump by name but showered the president with praise and said the upcoming election would be a pivotal choice for the country.
“It’s not about golf course promotions or birth certificates. We can’t let Barack Obama’s legacy fall into the hands of someone who doesn’t understand that, whose unsafe and divisive vision for our country will drag us backwards”, she said.
Democratic presidential candidate Ms Clinton also delivered a speech at the dinner and made a pitch for African-American support, during which she said the outgoing President was one of the best American leaders in history.
In a pair of university stops in battleground OH on Saturday, Bernie Sanders used his enduring popularity with young voters to urge support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
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Polls show Trump has little support from black voters, who supported Obama in record numbers during his run for the presidency. Retiring Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who was honored for his service, said of the GOP nominee, “His hatred and his bigotry has pulled the rug off and the sheet off the Republican Party so we can see it for what it is”. Without apologizing, the Republican presidential nominee reversed himself after years of promoting a conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya.
