Trump Surrogate Mark Burns Tweets Cartoon of Clinton in Blackface
Pastor Mark Burns, a prominent surrogate for Donald Trump, on Monday tweeted out a cartoon that accuses Hillary Clinton of pandering and portrays her in blackface.
Burns, who spoke at the Republican National Convention and has appeared on TV frequently as Trump intensifies his pitch to African-American voters, shared the meme of the former secretary of state, which shows her behind a lectern marked by her signature “H” logo and the text “Hillary 2016.”
The graphic shows Clinton wearing a black T-shirt that reads “No hot sauce no peace!” and wielding a placard that says “#@!*✶ the police.”
“I ain’t no ways tired of pandering to African Americans,” the text next to Clinton reads, emphasizing the word “pandering.”
“Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again..See you again in 4 years,” Burns tweeted, apparently conveying a message from Clinton to black voters.
The South Carolina evangelical dismissed the graphic as a “satire drawing” and maintained that while the blackface element may be offensive to African-Americans, what’s more offensive is the number of black people on welfare and food stamps.
Burns said he posted the picture to draw attention to Clinton’s pandering, decrying her policies as bad for African-Americans and condemning black voters for giving Democrats their votes without having to earn them.
“The tweet is a frustration that I have as a black man here in America and how I see African-Americans in many cases — not every case but in many cases — are suffering throughout this country and to see how en masse we have been voting for the Democratic Party en masse and yet we have very little to show for it,” he said during a phone interview on MSNBC. “It’s a vexation to me to see how the Democratic Party, and especially Hillary Clinton, what I call tap dance for the black vote, get it and then disappear for four more years.”
Trump himself has only recently begun reaching out to minority voters for the first time in his campaign, blaming Democrats for the plight of African-Americans who live in inner cities as he asks for the support of black and Hispanic voters in scripted speeches across the country.
The real estate mogul on Sunday acknowledged the 53rd anniversary of the March On Washington with a brief statement honoring the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all who marched alongside him.
The campaign also announced Sunday that Trump would be speaking to The Impact Network, a black-owned national Christian television network, in Detroit on Saturday.
“Mr. Trump will answer questions that are relevant to the African American community such as education (including HBCUs), unemployment, making our streets safe and creating better opportunities for all,” Burns said in the statement released by Trump’s campaign. “He will then give an address to outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country. Citizens around the country will see, as I’ve have seen, the heart and compassion Mr. Trump has for all Americans, which includes minority communities whose votes have been taken for granted for far too long.”
(h/t Politico)
Update
Mark Burns later apologized for the post, saying it was “not at all my intention to offend anyone.”