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These Bigots Have Formed The ‘National Diversity Coalition For Trump’

Donald Trump speaks in front of a pile of garbage. CREDIT: KEITH SRAKOCIC (AP)
Donald Trump speaks in front of a pile of garbage. CREDIT: KEITH SRAKOCIC (AP)

A key leader of a Donald Trump-linked committee dedicated to boosting the candidate’s outreach to women and minority groups posted a pair of vitriolic, anti-immigrant tweets on Tuesday. The tweets, the latest in a long string of offensive posts on social media, came from radio shock jock Wayne Dupree.

Dupree also sent out another tweet which advocated for what he called “the golden illegal alien rule,” by which meant a family illegally in the U.S. together should be deported together from the U.S.

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Making Dupree’s comments all the more offensive is the fact that he serves on the board of the “National Diversity Coalition for Trump.” The Diversity Coalition was formed by Trump’s Lawyer Michael Cohen in April with the goal of changing the perception that Trump is racist, Islamophobic, sexist, and misogynistic. Trump’s comments have made this a tall task, as he has overstated his relationship with “the Blacks,” called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and attacked various women as “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs,” and “disgusting animals.”

But it’s not just Dupree making comments that undermine the mission of the Diversity Coalition. Indeed, an examination of Dupree’s fellow board members revealed that most of them have made comments that go against the supposed mission of the Coalition to soften Trump’s image as the candidate of bigotry.

In June of 2015, Cohen, who serves as the co-chairman of the Diversity Coalition, came under fire when he said “you cannot rape your spouse” and told a reporter asking about allegations of rape against Trump to “tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.”

Those comments were not an isolated incident, however, as Cohen has a history of saying outrageous things.

Additionally, in 2016, the Root reported reported that Pastor Darrell Scott, the CEO of the Diversity Coalition, criticized the “liberal media” during a sermon, saying: “If I was Muslim, if I was homosexual, the media wouldn’t have a problem with what I was saying.” The Root also reported that Scott dismissed criticism of Trump’s suggestion that a Black Lives Matter protester at his rally should be “rouged up.” Scott reportedly defended Trump’s comments by saying members of Scott’s church would beat up anyone who disrupted his sermon.

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Additionally, Diversity Coalition Vice-Chairman Omarosa Manigaul, who has frequently appeared on Trump’s reality shows, gay baited fellow contestant Piers Morgan in a 2008 episode of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” claiming without evidence that he was “in the closet.”

It is unclear if the Diversity Coalition is officially part of the Trump campaign. However, Trump did meet with the Diversity Coalition in April at the group’s kickoff event in Trump Tower and Cohen remains executive vice president and special counsel at Trump’s company. Neither the Trump campaign nor the Diversity Coalition responded to requests for comment for this story.

Early indications show that the Diversity Coalition’s efforts to make Trump more palatable to a wider range of voters have failed. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that Trump is trailing Hillary Clinton among black voters by 82 percent, as well as among Latinos/Latinas by over 40 percent, and among women by 17 percent. In addition to not improving Trump’s stock among women and voters of color, the Diversity Coalition has also exposed itself as hypocritical by channeling many of the sentiments that made Trump need a Diversity Coalition in the first place.

Evan Popp is an intern at ThinkProgress