Trump’s 2016 campaign targeted Black people to dissuade them from voting
President Trump is being exposed by the British press for his Cambridge Analytical scandal.
Cambridge Analytical, which was a part of Trump’s campaign of 2016, is suspected of making use of user identity in order to mislead targeted voters. It has been reported that the data firm possessed records of 200 million Americans, who were categorized into eight groups on the basis of information related to their domestic and economic status. One group, which was marked as “deterrence” included 3.5 million Black Americans, and was consistently targeted with false information to stray them away from voting for either Hillary Clinton or in general, just voting.
The reports also stated that the data firm attempted to prevent Black people from voting for Clinton by using ads that made her seem like she didn’t care about Black people.
One particular ad included a 1996 video of Clinton wherein she was talking about gangs, and implying that she was talking about African Americans. After stating it was important “to have an organised effort against gangs,” Clinton said, “They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators – no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heal.”
Once a campaign halted payments, the dark posts were supposed to disappear, thereby making it challenging to trace the posts that the data firm created in 2016.
The details pertaining to the Cambridge Analytical scandal come in the wake of revelation by The New York Times regarding Trump’s tax returns over the years. The report revealed that the president just paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. Reportedly, he also didn’t pay income taxes in 10 out of 15 years before this, starting from 2000.
Since then, Trump denied the claims pertaining to his taxes and he claimed that he pays “a lot in state income taxes.”