Outraged media pundits assailing Donald Trump for fumbling his
appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago Wednesday are dead wrong. He may
have been speaking to that crowd, but it was never his target audience.
The people he wanted to reach were not in that room, or even Black folk or sensible non-Blacks watching at home. And it
certainly wasn't the "mainstream media" that slammed him for being tone deaf, cognitively dysfunctional, or reverting to his historic racist rhetoric.
Actually, the last part is right, because
his racist rhetoric -- whether explicitly demonstrated as it was at the NABJ event, or more nuanced and dog-whistled -- is an integral part of his core messaging to his actual audience: his racist
White nationalist base.
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In other words, he pulled one on the NABJ -- as well as mainstream media covering the event -- by using it as a way to bullhorn his messaging to his intended audience.
The fact that he sparked so much non-base outrage in the process was just icing on the cake.
Look, I may hate Trump, which I really do -- and long before he was a political figure -- and don't
think he belongs anywhere near a leadership position in America, much less the White House, but I've always given him props for his media skills. He is a maestro, and he demonstrated that Wednesday by
delivering the message he wanted, precisely to the audience he wanted, and he used an audience he will never win to pull it off.