“You walk to the store for a loaf of bread, you get shot.”
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
While campaigning in Florida on Tuesday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump resorted to some out-of-touch stereotypes to reach out to black voters. “African-Americans are living in hell in the inner cities,” he said. “They are living—they are living in hell. You walk to the store for a loaf of bread, you get shot,” he said, repeating remarks he has made throughout his campaign. Trump has been criticized for implying that all blacks live in dangerous neighborhoods and lead terrible lives, though statistics show that more blacks live in suburbs than in cities. But his exaggerated rhetoric was perhaps all the more jarring Tuesday as he spoke in Sanford, Florida, where Travyon Martin was shot four years earlier. In 2013, Trump famously said he “didn’t disagree” with the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the security guard who shot the unarmed Martin and later claimed he had fended off a “near-death brutal attack” by the teenager. Trump made no mention of Martin in his speech Tuesday.
