Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump unveiled what he called a “New Deal for black America” and revealed a handful of new proposals aimed at revitalizing impoverished urban areas on Wednesday in hope to sway minority voters.
Part of Trump’s so called “new deal” included new tax incentives for inner cities, new micro-loans for African-Americans to start companies and hire workers and plan to reinvest money form suspended refugee programs in inner cities.
POLL SHOWS TRUMP GAINING ON CLINTON
“I will be your greatest champion,” Trump told a predominantly white Charlotte crowd. “I will never ever take the African American community for granted. Never, ever.”
Trump also pledged to take on gang members and remove them from inner cities. He also claimed that the national murder rate was as high as it’s been in 45 years.
“Some of our inner cities are more dangerous than the war zones we’re reading about and seeing about every night.”
Earlier in the day, Trump was in Washington touting his business empire in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new hotel. He made the case that all Americans should look to his corporate record for evidence of how well he’d run the country if elected president.
"Under budget and ahead of schedule. So important. We don't hear those words so often, but you will," said Trump, linking the hotel redevelopment — just blocks from the White House — to his promised performance as president. "Today is a metaphor for what we can accomplish for this country."
As Trump opened his hotel, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was blasting his business practices on the campaign trail in the key battleground state of Florida.
She used campaign events in Florida to attack the GOP nominee for having "stiffed American workers," saying he built his empire with Chinese-manufactured steel, overseas products and labor from immigrants in the country illegally.
"Donald Trump is the poster boy for everything wrong with our economy," she told several thousand supporters in Tampa, Florida. "He refuses to pay workers and contractors."
Clinton also told reporters: "I was struck today that Donald Trump was paying more attention to his business than to the campaign. That's his choice but we're going to keep working really hard to reach as many voters as possible."
As the Nov. 8 election looms, the newest Fox News Poll shows Clinton leading Trump by just three points. In an effort to play some political defense, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was touting the campaign in Utah in hopes to keep votes from choosing Independent Evan McMullin over the two mainstream candidates.
Besides Utah, Pence also was stopping in the swing states of Nevada and Colorado before heading Thursday to solidly Republican Nebraska.
Trump, who also held a rally in the city of Kinston, continued to insist he knows more than the nation's military leaders, especially when it comes to the fight against Islamic State militants in the city of Mosul.
"You can tell your military expert that I'll sit down and I'll teach him a couple of things," he said in an interview with ABC.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.