The man pointed out by GOP nominee Donald Trump at a recent rally as "my African-American over here" said he's not a supporter of the presidential candidate.
“Look at my African-American over here! Look at him!” Trump said. “Are you the greatest? You know what I’m talking about, OK?”
Trump made the comment Friday during a rally in California. Gregory Cheadle told NPR he was just there to hear Trump — not to hop on his bandwagon.
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"I am not a Trump supporter," Gregory Cheadle told NPR. "I went to go hear Donald Trump because I have an open mind."
Cheadle is a Republican candidate for a California congressional race. He said he was not offended by Trump’s comment.
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“I was not offended by it because he had been speaking positively about black people prior to that statement,” Cheadle said. “People around me were laughing [at the fact] that he noticed me, and everybody was happy. It was a jovial thing.”
“Had he said, ‘Here’s my African-American friend’ or ‘my African-American supporter’ or something like that, then there would be less ambiguity,” Cheadle continued. “Had he said, ‘Here’s my African-American’ and then after that said, ‘What’s up, dawg,’ or ‘boy’ or even the N-word as they use it today, I really would have been offended.”
Cheadle took no offense, but Twitter sure did. Many were up in arms over Trump’s use of the word “my,” as if Cheadle were his possession.
The comment comes on the heels of recent polls that show Trump is having a difficult time connecting with minority voters. Sixty-two percent of Hispanic voters said they have an unfavorable view of Trump. About 19 percent of black voters polled said they have a "very" or "somewhat" favorable view of him.
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