President Donald Trump and Democrat hopeful Michael Bloomberg both got smacked down by an African American sports blogger for allegedly using black women's pain for political gain in their respective Super Bowl commercials. Carron J. Phillips, who writes for The Shadow League, also writes that Trump is a "toddler" who hasn't done anything for African Americans in his time as president.
Trump's commercial Sunday night focused on Alice Johnson, an African American woman who was released from jail for a nonviolent drug offense, due to the president's prison reform efforts.
“I’m free to hug my family," Johnson said. "I’m free to start over. It’s the greatest day of my life. My heart is just bursting with gratitude. I want to thank President Donald John Trump.”
Phillips denies that Trump deserves credit for this, saying it's merely proof that "he will use this country’s biggest sporting and cultural event to advertise his prejudicial and misogynistic philosophies while our nation’s most beloved game is being played.":
"If I was scheduled to live the rest of my life in prison I would thank whoever, no matter who it was, freed me, too. But yet, Trump found a way to use Johnson’s first moments of freedom as a way to align himself with Black voters."
Kim Kardashian West lobbied Trump for Johnson’s freedom, says Phillips. "It was never some act of kindness on behalf of the President, the man that once publicly referred to a Black woman as a dog (Omarosa) in August of 2018."
“That ad was offensive AF. The 'I freed a Negro” ad,' ” tweeted CNN Political Analyst and former Representative from South Carolina, Bakari Sellers.
Phillips also ridiculed Trump for mistakenly tweeting that the Kansas City, Mo., Chiefs had represented their home state of Kansas well by winning Super Bowl 54. "This is what happens when a toddler is elected as the leader of the free world. ... We deserve a President that’s passed an elementary school Social Studies class."
The president corrected his geography mistake, but Phillips blundered by claiming -- erroneously -- that this president "has done very little to help the plight of Black folks in this country."
Phillips' claim flunks fact checking. Unemployment among African Americans on Trump's watch has hit a historic low. One year, his administration appropriated more money to historically black colleges and universities than any other president had done.
Nearly one million more blacks and two million more Hispanics are employed now compared to Barack Obama's presidency. They also gained more than half of all new jobs created during the Trump Administration. Unemployment among black women is the lowest it's been since 1972. Just 3.5% of high school graduates are jobless.
Bloomberg's ad (see photo) focused on his crusade against the Second Amendment and featured African American Calandrian Kemp, a black woman whose son George H. Kemp Jr. was shot to death in 2013. Phillips asserts Bloomberg was more than happy to follow Trump’s lead and use Black women to his benefit.:
"This is the part where I remind you that when Bloomberg was the Mayor of New York City he was the face of the stop-and-frisk policy that allowed police to traumatize and unjustly go after black and brown men at will.''
Phillips concluded, "Red or Blue. Democrat or Republican. It didn’t matter Sunday night. Because in the end, both sides were guilty of using Black women’s pain as props."
