tired at certain segments of our society always putting down my race. It's like they don't even see us as human

I read that his pitch isn't really to black folk but to white folk who will think he cares about black folk and is consequently not the racist he has been portrayed as.

That assumes most white folk are so dumb as to believe all black folk are helpless...


This makes me depressed.

that this was really pitched to white voters, specifically white Republican voters, but I don't think he was trying to convince anyone he's not a racist. I think he was trying to convince Republicans that *they* aren't racists if they support Trump.

Struck this white woman the same way.

Not really tone deaf, either. He plays to his crowds, which are filled with racists, wannabe fascists, and other stupid white people.

It is the only thing that makes sense. And this is the 2nd time he's spoken like this to a room full of white people.

It was clearly directed to white people. I don't think he was even telling his white base that "see I'm not as racist as they say I am", sounded more like he was painting black people as inferior losers, confirming his base's perceptions. He was telling his supporters that black folks can't achieve any kind of success without government help.

It was ugly, condescending, paternalistic, and most certainly racist.

...think maids, janitors and chauffeurs or simply back into the cotton fields, and thus, useful to white society rather than drug-addicted-criminals and welfare-queens. So he not only plays to his audience in confirming their bias and fear of blacks, but also says that whites can "leave it to him" to, yes, restore law and order. He'll employee blacks and make them fit for polite society.

And,if blacks don't vote for him, then white Trump voters can say (continuing the racism): "They don't want to better themselves. They want to stay poor and criminal." And how could they refuse Trump being so generous, so inclusive?

Ultimately, Trump's message is always the same: "You should be scared of this, which the Democrats have caused/done nothing about. Vote for me, I'll take care of it and make you feel safe again." The same message of white supremacists from, well, forever.

Once he builds that "wall", there will be a shortage of cheap labor for the farmers, casinos, restaurants, and hotels. So all those unemployed black folks will have plenty of jobs to choose from!

Of course, he does not expect black people to vote for him. He is just reminding his racist base that he hasn't changed and that he still embraces their bigotry. And yes, you're right, he can say, "See African Americans don't want to better themselves. I promised them jobs and they still voted for the Democrat."

I don't know, maybe he is fooling a few people, but they hear what they want to hear.

"See? He's not racist! He wants to help that black folks!"

And it is not even done well. I would think the target population would be offended by this gesture. It begs the question if he thinks they are THAT stupid.

this assessment.

How the parties break down.

29% dem
26% rep
42% ind


A closer look at the ind
16% lean dem
14% lean rep
12% ind

in 2012 90% lean dem voted for Obama. 78% of lean rep voted rMoney.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/independents-outnumber-democrats-and-republicans-but-theyre-not-very-independent/

His goal is to get a majority of that 12% and pick off as much of the dem ind that he can. He has his base solidly locked in. Even with his "pivot" he can say what he wants and his base will not budge. They will rationalize it as trump saying things to get votes, he doesn't really mean it.
The question is will the ind fall for this hooey? I wish I could say no with 100% certainty.

Or a disease outbreak that's self-limiting by burning too hot. We are still the nation who elected President Obama twice, and might well a third if only we could. A backlash is already occurring, or more accurately many of them among many voter groups.

I confess, my first response was to laugh on reading those profound insults, they were just so...trumpster fire-ish. A one-man riot torching his own campaign. There's not the slightest chance that AAs could be fooled by him, and how many of any color or ethnicity would imagine that these factory-whistle insults were actually directed at anyone but white bigots? A pretend gesture to reassure them they're not racists while appealing to it at the same time?

Extremely important words you have spoken. Yes, there is racism in the USA. But that sentence says more than Donald Trump could ever say or do about racism or any kind of hatred toward any minority groups in the USA.............oh......one more....my opinion...........This Obama, the one who is the President of the United States...is the most respected person in this entire, whole world..........................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The campaign figures if he could get 3 percent why not. Do you think that's the reason?

"But they look so different from us. How can they be the same species?"

I was dumbfounded. I would love to have seen my face at that moment. I could not believe he seriously thought that. Then I remembered his dog that he loved so much, a Rottweiler, & I pointed out that a Rottweiler doesn't look anything like a Dachshund, but they're both dogs. He just said, "Hmmm," & walked away.

Great comeback! I wonder if you made anything tick in that great dark abyss of a brain of his.

Blacks were the first humans, etc. they prefer the religious thing where they are somehow chosen or specially created. Idiots.

This is the GOP line since forever, and Trump has just turned the dog whistle into a bullhorn.

is useless and serves no purpose. Can't wait for this to be over and Hillary crushes him.

Too many initials and acronyms for me to keep up.

on edit: oh wait - is it you, Democratsincebirth? Don't think I've ever seen you refer to yourself in the third person.

I even Googled "DSB goes apocalyptic" to try to find out who DSB was.

...there was an insistence that economic reform was some sort of panacea for the black community, complete with incredulity that anyone would think otherwise.

I'd bet that polling would show this is a widespread view. Sad to see it parroted from people who are angling to lead the nation.

...the conservative canard about idle blacks on welfare. It's more complex than just denigrating blacks.

Trump had nothing except his racist repertoire as a reference so he put the best face on his views about blacks that he could manage, while giving up nothing of the conservative philosophy of race he shares with the majority of republicans. Here's a speech about reaching out to black voters made in front of a gathering of white people who very likely view people outside of their race as inferior and threatening. Nothing he said stands in the way of the conservative's pet narrative which claims blacks are benefiting from their fictional 'welfare state' and whites are victims of all that.

What he said was less directed toward blacks than it was intended to reassure white folk that Trump is still their white nationalist nominee, no matter what he promises black folk.

It was about the civil rights era . There were these two white upper middle class southern women lamenting the fact that blacks were lazy while the black maids were toiling away in the kitchen.

It reminds me of the line from a Public Enemy song that black women were so busy raising white women's children they didn't have enough time for their own.

Racism is a sin and an affront to God.

...trained to be frightened or resentful of blacks by political leaders and others deflecting from their economic shell game, looking to divert resources from areas where they're most needed.

The fiction of whites paying for 'lazy' blacks who don't want to work becomes conventional wisdom among their targeted constituency and serves to bolster their indifference or hostility at voting time toward political remedies directed at neglected and shortchanged communities.

For fearful or resentful rubes, this is the gospel that mobilizes them into the republican ranks.

I heard the dog whistle loud and clear.

Big Daddy Donny got to do ALL the heavy lifting for us po' little helpless things!
The one time I would ever wear stilleto heels would be to step on his....foot.

...not a 'rising tide raises all boats' approach.

but trump and people like trump have created and added to these problems as they keep being successful in cutting their own taxes they pay....offshore jobs.....

trump is the problem...and no way he can be a part of any solution

Some black people are struggling. Some Asian people are struggling... Some white people are struggling...

Trump suggested all black people are struggling. That is the suggestion that raised my ire.

an asshole. He'll always be an asshole. Frankly, I have no idea if he is personally a racist, but his actions and words on the campaign trail show he is completely capable of dog whistling to his racist base.

I've heard numerous talking heads pointing this out, too. It's not being ignored by the media.

About as far removed from "the inner cities" as you can get.

by the Fruit they bear(that is their acts of Good). I have inspected Trump's Fruit for years and found it all to be rotten to the core!

what is he talking about? sperm count?

It takes money and programs and commitment to revitalize communities

Entrepreneurship, loans, seed money, goals and incentives

Public housing didn't work so well.

Bluster - "produce"! - is just more Trump Hot Air

Sometimes I think I know what he was trying to say and other times I'm sure he's left the planet and is orbiting Mars.

With all that as prologue, here's what I want to focus on. In the two segments in this single video we see the same dynamic which has played out all over the Trump campaign over the last few days. Put simply, they're so wrapped up in racial antagonism that they can't keep track of whether they're trying to execute the standard faux outreach act or just angry trolling. It's all so close to the surface they can't help blurting out lines that sound more like something you might say shooting the shit with David Duke. Trump's 'appeal' amounts to a diatribe against African-American life which bristles with contempt. Kingston is the same, just in a different form. In the following interview, when Keilar presses Kingston on why Trump is doing 'outreach' from all white suburbs, he tries to parry her question but then he blurts out: "Maybe it would have been nicer if he had a backdrop with a burning car!"

Yikes!

Like I said, they're so off the rails they can barely stay in character.

And where the hell is the media?????? Is this meme so damned regular for reps that the media thinks it's just a difference of opinion?

... none of the media seem to be interested in portraying non-whites as anything other than economically disadvantaged and hopeless. The candidates aren't much better.

The fact that, for blacks and whites of essentially the same economic class, blacks are likely to be more poorly paid, discriminated against in numberless ways big and small, and subject to treatment by authority as if they were all proto-criminals, is not something that seems to have penetrated. It makes a mockery of the idea that "economic equality" will equate to "social equality." Yet it is a chicken-an-egg question, as MLK recognized: it doesn't much matter if blacks are "allowed" to take a room at the Hilton if they can't afford one.

One doesn't expect anything different from Mr Trump; and one really shouldn't expect much different from a society that prefers to embrace simplistic thinking, stereotypes, and racism over reality.

-- Mal

However there there are serious economic issues and disproportionate percent of POC living in poverty in this country.

From memory ~42% of Hispanic children and 38% of African American children in this country are living poverty. We have 46.9 million people living in poverty in this country. An increase of 8 million people in the last 8 years.

Do you think poverty is getting enough attention ?

Concrete proposals to do something about it are certainly lacking.

-- Mal

Not this shit again.

I have never lived in poverty, grew up in a 2 parent home owning household, went to private schools and college. I grew up barely knowing anyone poor, all my parents friends had jobs, homes and in older age retirement. Funny, the only poor people i knew were white.

If it does not resonate with the crowd he is addressing, it should fall flat.

He does not say it applies only to blacks, blacks in all locations, or even blacks he might be addressing at the moment. That all comes from projecting from what he said. I don't see anything for the media to push back here. I see a problem for Democrats that needs to handled.

and ended up walking out quite depressed and disgusted. A youngish AA male, was on his phone talking about the person running as nominee for the New Nazi Party of America. He was impressed by the nazi and was unashamed to talk openly about his support. He disparaged Hillary on the 'corporate spokesperson' meme. He disparaged her on the Benghazi meme, and kept on with those Foxsnooze talking points. I turned around and looked directly into his eyes and shook my head in disgust. He continued with a glowing account, quieter, of how he sees the fuhrer as '"different" because he is real and not the typical politician like HRC and even Bernie was used.. My self serve register opened I turned to him and said "no" quietly, he ignored me and did not meet my eyes and thankfully my register was far enough away that I was not subject to any more insult to my reason.

This is the danger of trump, as I sense it, a culture has been since reagan in dumbdown the youth mode that has sufficiently done its work. Every word for many is taken at face value and inquiring minds are rare in disputing gained information from lying demogogues. With education and history of america redefined and many important parts totally obliterated about how demagogues get their start with lies that appeal to low information individuals who have spent all their time on 'pokemon' and 'Furious' genre type movies it is no wonder to me how quickly a racist, bigoted, individual such as trump could get a foothold in the minds of those who ignore the truth about trump or just don't care to know. The zombies running amok in a lot of the modern movies also appeal to these individuals also in the sense of the nazis appeal to their fears of coming apocalypse caused by rational human beings such as populate, so far, the majority of american voting public.

I am wondering just how many 'hiddden' votes are out there like this young man?

Demonization is not a good thing. That poor Indian kid whose first involvement in politics got him tossed out of the Trump rally certainly didn't admire Trump for his bigotry. Until then he had an entirely different picture.

I personally would not have bothered this guy for his populist imaginings that Trump is the "different," "real" leader we need. After all, the politicians conservatives have trusted for decades have been betraying them that entire time and they've only recently awakened to it.

And he might be wrong in assuming Hillary is a corporate tool, but at least he is against corruption and against corporate infiltration of our power centers. In that respect he is one of us, even if he doesn't know it.

all trump supporters are nazis, for sure, just 99.8% of them. I have a neighbor that is not a nazi, unless he is a closeted one yet when I point out the bigotry and hate spewed by their fuhrer and all the david duke types he has not disavowed, in this, he says, he does not agree with his fuhrer, but says its really all hyperbole to gin up the vote. Yet according to him, "trump is a self made man and not beholdden to anyone". I ask what about manafort and the russian connection plus the rumblings some of trumps war chest funds came from putin, he blows it off as liberal press bias and lies. Just can't breach their walls of ignorance. That's what's depressing. Just how awful their level of awareness is concerning their fuhrers real motives and pathology. That young man in the store is a ben carson the younger I imagine. I really can't see him as getting paid by trump to say what he was saying as a ben carson or any other AA on his campaign does, so that makes their inability to face reality about their leader all the more depressing to me.

Yet I know that all who cheered on hitlers rise in the beginning were not nazis, yet look where their support got them. That precedent worries me, period.

backatcha

are modern counterparts of those who turned Germany over to Hitler, just not knowing just how bad what they were supporting was going to be. I was fascinated when I learned that in the very beginning Hitler got elected on talking points very strongly similar to Ronald Reagan's, national security, family values, protecting traditional religion from secular threats.

Like Trump Hitler appealed to people who wanted authoritarian leadership, and like Trump's and Bernie's his was also a populist movement, the signs of potential extremism mostly hidden to or ignored by the naive. It's populist resentments -- active on both the right and left -- that makes me nervous. That union elected Hitler.

As for calling 99% of conservatives Nazis, no one can stop you. To be fair, though, I don't think you should complain if some of your counterparts call you a stalinist and insist you intend to send them all to gulags in the west, even warn you they're armed and have no intention of letting you and your fellow commie thugs load them onto those trains without a fight.

if conservatives want to be, for the most part, bigoted and racist, which is what has emerged this election season and if by some miracle, with voter apathy or some such complacency trump enters the WH as Casear america will get what it has been looking for since the white reactionary era of Nixon and Atwater. Reaction against what you might ask. The Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 64-65. A majority did not want these rights given. Hence Nisxon-Atwater and their 'Southern Strategy' as a reaction and an election winning stategy. I have NOT been fooled by america and its protestations of equality for all who live on its land or come from other lands to partake in our 'freedoms'. The white racist has gone crazy with joy and the overtness of trump backing them. This election season IS "the chickens coming home to roost". November will prove once and for all what this country really is all about......I really can't wait for election night.

Half of our electorate of some 150 M are conservatives. If 75 M voted for Trump he'd very likely be our president. But they're not going to. And of those who vote, many will be voting for something else they think is very important, in spite of his racist message--because, foolish or not, they see him as the only one speaking to their concerns.

You know, of course,that Republicans claiming that Democrats all vote for lazy people to sit around on welfare are just grabbing an excuse to insult. It's not just simply not true, but ridiculously not true.

Ridiculously not true beliefs go both ways. Maybe think about it? Only racists are racists.

Bigotry: Extreme intolerance of others irrespective of reasoning.

Demonizing: Technique of promoting a group as a threatening evil aggressor with only destructive objectives.

that is the major reason for racism STILL being so entrenched and embedded in this society and its culture since the first slave was freed. When the first slave ship, The Good ship Jesus arrived in Jamestown, a British 700 ton, no one at that time had an inkling of what horror, degredation, murder andd rape that would last for centuries right up to our modern times it held in its hellish hold.. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

I am 68 years old and have been voting since 1972. I have since watched in disdain as this country has slowly drifted toward the extreme RW conservative abyss that it is looking into now with this election choice that the conservatives have nominated as their candidate. What mockery, what insult to all black and white patriots who have died fighting for equality for all in this society. Minorities in this country should not still in 2016 be fighting to vote. Young blacks should not have to deal with fear every time he or she sees a police officer as they walk or drive in our 'free' society. From Trayvon Martin to Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland the reason for this fear is murderously clear and it is despicable in its stinking hypocrisy.

Minorities are americans ready to give their life for this country. I am a man who has always been classified by the early american apartheid system as a minority volunteered for Vietnam asnd the Army. Misguided loyalty but true and served honorably, ETA as Sgt E-5 after 2 years 7 months active duty, 13 months in Vietnam. I came home and was still classified as negro, a word with negative connotation and worse. The worse word still used frequently in this society to prejudge a certain type of citizen of america. Don't misunderstand me, religion, fear and the hate fear creates has kept racist white people hateful and always potentially murderous.

It's the conservatives shooting and killing young, unarmed AA men, women and children. Not progressives or liberals. Conservatives have made themselves a hated group in my experience with them. You can intimate that I am racist or bigoted because I see the hate of bigotry and racism when some whites interact with AA. I see and hear it every day in the job I do. Whites try to bait me with talk of section 8 housing and robberies that are perpetrated by AA. I never take the bait except to say whites do the same thing. Rob, kill, rape and destroy whole cultures and countries.

I don't hate all white peopler, just the ones that hate me based on their superficial and ignorant criteria, my skin color. Yes I DO return hate for hate just as I do for love and kindness. Turn the other cheek in not in my vocabulary and never will be. American liberal and non racist conservatives, if such an animal exists among whites, need to GROW UP and tell their racist counterparts to cease and desist their ignorant and antiquated ideal that white skin is supreme and start working, TRUELY, with all citizens of this nation to finally make it the great nation it has the potenial of being.

murder and rape that would last for centuries right up to our modern times it held in its hellish hold."

Of course they did.

You know, with all you've lived through, from my view you seem to be overly affected by negative developments. Please don't be fooled by the "if it bleeds" coverage of the media. Hate is good for viewership. What we are seeing was actually always here. That we elected Obama twice and have many black leaders in all sectors and the decades of slow but enormous advances before that should more than balance this current nastiness from a real but overhyped minority.

As for history, remember, African slavery didn't exactly start with settling of the Americas. Migration of Europeans to the new world merely opened up a big new, dreadful market for what had been a prosperous industry all over Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years. (Relatively few African slaves were exported to the Indian subcontinent and the Far East mostly because traditions of enslaving local peoples there made importation unnecessary. But it was still slavery.)

Slavery was only outlawed in the British Empire in 1833, over 200 years after the trans-Atlantic trade began. A huge problem for slave-owners in America from almost the very beginning was the large numbers of people opposed or implacably opposed to slavery. Our own history for over 400 years up through and beyond the Civil War is full of strife and division, often bloody, over this issue.

The settling of the Americas, with its development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, unquestionably tragically increased and lengthened the period of the African slave trade.

Interestingly, slave trade had mostly died out in Europe after 1000 CE (replaced by the unofficial enslavement of the whole populations by serfdom, which killed the market) though not Africa and the Middle East. Btw, before then it was not associated with race--people from almost any group might be enslaved. For thousands of years, with all the evils that come with it.

THIS map is during the Medieval era, when there was no major slave trade with the European continent, and of course none with the Americas.


As for conservatives, if you don't like bigotry, I recommend you reserve your condemnation of racism for those who have earned it--and slam them! I share your condemnation of all conservatives who have rubber-stamped the primary choices of their hateful, bigoted members.

But with us are some conservatives who resisted the pack behavior of most. The evil ones literally plotted to divide us so we couldn't form a solid majority to oppose them. People who want to continue the advances sabotage themselves by hating and rejecting their own natural allies. We really, really need to resist the indulgence.

on slavery-serfdom, Europe and other places. FYI I do not watch any "if it bleeds" MSM. Just don't because of who, for the most part, are able to slant the news to be important to those that wish to remain fearful and uninformed. My knowleddge comes from years of private study that started in college. One such resource I have relied upon, 'The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of Race from 4500 BC to 2000 CE. is among many I still refer too. Lerone Bennett has a series that was/is important in my understanding of american slavery and trade and that I still rely upon.

I understand human nature in regard to how warfare and dominance has played a prominent role in the fits and start progress of the human race in both intra race and inter race warfares of dominance and greed. Therein lies my basis for knowing who and what has been responsible for the many millenia's of hate, warfare and destruction of whole civilizations and cultures over the history of human existence. All have been responsible, no race is without taint.

Allies come and go. Those that stay, in my experience, are not driven by any real loyalty to the AA, just by an ethical and principled standard that all should try to attain to achieve a real discernable movement toward equality that won't takre another 6000 years to attain. Those who leave never were allies. Period.

I appreciate this discourse. I have a need to understand the viewpoint of those like you because it helps me to feel there is a glimmer of hope that truly good people can change this world in positive ways, one day.

how anyone can view this period as anything but one of overall advance, not just in the U.S. but even around the planet for all its turmoil. Understanding that advances inevitably result in both snags and in attempts, sometimes successful but mostly only partially, to drag us backwards.

I don't think I have any illusions about the various crimes against humanity that conservative attitudes toward "outsiders" tend to result in. In fact, after years of my own observation, I feel that the limitations of strong conservatives of any type make them intrinsically unsuited to government of a free and diverse nation. At any level.

I do, though, feel that in our voting republic it is critically important to hold the door open for those more moderate conservatives whose attitudes toward both insiders and outsiders are similarly positive and decent. That majorities rule is the bottom line.

hit a home run?/ trump to a t.

Roughly the same idea.

-- Mal

Welcome to DU.

Your defense of Trump in your first post is noted.

It is a true statement to say "Democrats support Hillary Clinton", even though some Democrats do not.

It does not mean "all" support her.

Nor is it necessary to only say things that apply to "all" Democrats or "all" African Americans when saying true general things about those groups.

He is using the collective "you" throughout his speech. But nice try.

Imagine the wisdom I was denied!!! LOL

person's personal situation in that group is wonderful. Your example is awful and not only doesnt make your intended point, it shows you don't understand the concept of privilege.

In plain idiomatic English it is stupid to suggest all black people are poor.

It's hard to imagine a much worse pitch Donald Trump could have made for the black vote
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/20/its-hard-to-imagine-a-much-worse-pitch-donald-trump-could-have-made-for-the-black-vote/

Why? Because nonwhite voters view Trump very unfavorably. We wrote about this in June but can now update the numbers. Four-in-5 blacks have a very unfavorable view of Trump, with a slightly higher percentage, 83 percent, agreeing with the idea that he is biased against women and minorities. Eighty-seven percent of black voters we surveyed indicated that they would be anxious if he were elected president and only 6 percent "comfortable." The numbers for Clinton — who very quickly tweeted that Trump's Michigan comments were "so ignorant it's staggering" -- were nearly completely flipped.

There are any number of reasons that black Americans might view Trump unfavorably, starting with his 2011 effort to cast suspicion on Obama's place of birth. Or, probably, starting with his full-page ad calling for the death penalty against five black teenagers in New York City who were accused of rape — wrongly, as it turned out. Or perhaps thanks to the support his current candidacy is getting from people like former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.

There's no reason to think that Trump's suggestion that black Americans had "nothing to lose" because they "are living in poverty" will do anything to reverse that trend. Nor was his insistence in North Carolina that he should get votes from black voters because "the inner cities are so bad." Some black people, research shows, live in places besides the "inner city."

Its patently obvious, hes saying, "hey, you welfare king and queens, you are worthless anyways, so just vote for me already."

Such an inspiring message.

they aren't doing it either.

I wrote an extended (yeah, read: LONGWINDED!) OP about the same complaint, and some ideas I suggest as to how we the viewers can start fighting back, and putting the media folks on notice for their lazy biased "journalism".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512375482

I think we have to start fighting back, A LOT, and directly in their faces. I suggest using Twitter. Hey, if The Donald can stir up shitstorms with Twitter, why can't we?

Stolen directly from the Carpet Baggers.

a reach around.

"Let's end welfare. Let's end food stamps. Let's shut down all the Section 8 housing that I don't own, and let me convert mine into luxury condos. We will force people to attain self-sufficiency or die trying, and they will thank me later."

When people are so poor they ate their boots in the last Republican administration, how is forcing them to pull themselves up by bootstraps that don't exist any more going to help?

This worthless cocksucker is not capable of keeping HIMSELF out of bankruptcy court. How the hell is he going to improve anyone's lot?

It was his suggestion that the lives of black suck that was patently offensive.


I suspect Trump knows a few wealthy African Americans like Don King and a few working class ones who work for him and very few other African Americans.

Trump is like the NK dude?

That you can now use "what have you got to lose?" for any absolutely ludicrous concept.

people like this, have they ever known any black folk, worked with them / for them? JEEZ.

This leads to poor whites acting like they took the Red Pill and are now all smug and snobbishly superior.

She pointed out that black youth unemployment is not the 58% that Trump claimed but rather 20%--only one-third of what he claimed--and of course the ridiculousness of suggesting that all African Americans are poor.

His polling numbers suck so bad he can't do much else other than desperate attempts to look relevant, which he has yet to accomplish.