Trump being Trump can sometimes amaze.

Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 8/19/16

Download

Tuesday night (Aug. 16, 2016), Donald Trump gave what may be the best speech so far in his candidacy. Speaking in West Bend, Wisconsin, about 45 miles north of riot-torn Milwaukee, Trump went directly at the sorry state of American inner cities and the disproportionate impact thereof on African-Americans.

Trump did something that gives most Republicans the vapors. He spoke the truth to black voters. He said out loud what most people think but never say.

There was no pandering. He promised no new federal benefits or jobs programs or free education initiatives.

What he did was acknowledge the fact that crime and bad policy disproportionately affect law-abiding black citizens.

He called the recent rioting in Milwaukee;

…an assault on the right of all citizens to live in security and live in peace.”

[snip]

“The main victims of these riots are law-abiding African-American citizens living in these neighborhoods. It’s their jobs, it’s their homes, it’s their schools and communities which will suffer the most as a result.”

Unlike GOP candidates of the past, Trump didn’t lard the speech with focus-tested euphemisms. He spoke clearly and directly to black voters who support Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin. They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable.”

He also promised not to do what Democrats have done since the 1960s…take black voters for granted.

The African-American community has been taken for granted for decades by the Democratic Party. It’s time to break with the failures of the past – I want to offer Americans a new future.

[snip]

Every insider, getting rich off of our broken system, is throwing money at Hillary Clinton. The hedge fund managers, the Wall Street investors, the professional political class. It’s the powerful protecting the powerful. Insiders fighting for insiders.

I am fighting for you.”

Of course the speech drew sharp criticism from the Left. The Twitterverse lit up.

“Once again, Trump delivers a very divisive speech on community policy…” Tweeted interim DNC chair Donna Brazile.

The Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie Tweeted, “He doesn’t even know he’s being racist.”

Many others on the Left have similarly weighed in.

Will the speech bring about a tidal wave of black support for Trump? Not likely. Hillary will still win the vast majority of black votes.

But the speech may have started something. Because Trump actually said it out loud, it’s possible that some unknowable number of black men and women, stuck in the hopelessness and squalor of inner cities that have been destroyed by decades of Democratic rule, are now asking themselves, “Why do I keep voting for these people?”

When it comes to opening the eyes of African-Americans to the ways in which the Democratic Party has failed them, the Republican Party – at least 20 years late – has to start somewhere.

Donald Trump at last did.

It was in West Bend, Wisconsin.