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The supporter who Trump called “my African American” just disavowed Trump and left Republican Party

The supporter who Trump called “my African American” just disavowed Trump and left Republican Party

The Black man who Donald Trump once referred to as “my African American” at a rally is finally turning his back on our racist president. PBS NewsHour reports that the man in question, Gregory Cheadle, has announced he will be officially leaving the GOP and running for a 2020 Congressional seat as an independent. The 62-year-old Cheadle has problems with the profound lack of people of color serving in top positions in the Trump administration as well as the president’s increasingly divisive rhetoric about race.

“When you look at his appointments for the bench: White, white, white, white white, white, white. That to me is really damning to everybody else because no one else gets a chance because he’s thinking that the whites are superior, period,” said Cheadle.

Originally a Republican because of the conservative party’s views on economics, Cheadle worries that the GOP is starting to actively pursue a “pro-white” platform and has little interest in black voters beyond exploiting them as “political pawns.”

“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme. Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves,” said Cheadle.

Cheadle was disturbed by the fact that so many prominent Republicans rallied behind Trump after he targeted four Congresswomen of color and told them to go back to their own countries, even though three of them are native-born Americans. Around the same time, Cheadle watched in dismay as the president attack another Congressperson of color, Rep. Elijah Cummings, and said his city of Baltimore was “disgusting” and “rat and rodent infested.” Cheadle also found that Republican friends of his on Facebook were too quick to defend the president’s clearly offensive comments.

“They were sidestepping the people of color issue and saying that, ‘No, it’s not racist. They were saying these people were socialists and communists,” said Cheadle. “That’s what they were saying. And I thought this is a classic case of whites not seeing racism because they want to put blinders on and make it about something else.”

With his new understanding of Trump and the racial animus swirling within him and coursing through his movement, Cheadle now has a different opinion of Trump’s infamous “my African American” comment, which he took at the time to be a harmless joke.

“I’m more critical of it today than I was back then because today I wonder to what extent he said that for political gain or for attention,” explained Cheadle.

While he still refuses to call Trump an overt racist he says he believes he has a “white superiority complex,” which frankly seems to be a distinction without a real difference. In the next election cycle, Cheadle says he will consider candidates from every party and will base his vote in part on how he thinks their individual platforms will affect the African American community.

Staff Report
This is a staff report from former Occupy Democrats Editor in Chief Colin Taylor or contributor Rob Haffney.

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