Hillary Clinton decided not to take on an African-American accent when speaking to the National Urban League in Florida on Friday, but did do something equally pandering to her audience -- she methodically listed almost all of the names of the blacks who have been killed in recently by police and disingenuously adopted the social justice mantra, "Black Lives Matter."
This is not to say that what she said wasn't meaningful to those gathered -- many of her statements were met with light applause -- but in this extremely important election cycle, it is hard to suspend the reality that Hillary Clinton is vying for the presidency -- a fact even NBC News picked up on:
The "Black Lives Matter" activists have emphasized the importance of saying the names of African-Americans who have been killed during or after controversial interactions with police. Clinton heeded this call.
Clinton gave soft-spoken tributes to Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland:
Trayvon Martin, shot to death not in some empty, desolate street somewhere, but in a gated community. He wasn't a stranger, he had family there. Or Sandra Bland, a college-educated young woman who knew her rights, who didn't do anything wrong, but still ended up dying in a jail cell.
Noticeably absent from her tributes was Michael Brown. Clinton said, "Together, we've mourned Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray, and most recently, Sam Dubose."
"These names are emblazoned on our hearts," she added.
Watch below:
In a bold move and making it clear she is all about the politics, Clinton even managed to slip in a jab at presidential rival Jeb Bush, also in attendance and a speaker at the event, by playing off his slogan "Right to Rise" and using it to criticize his policies:
I don't think you can credibly say that everyone has a right to rise, and say you're for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare. People can't rise if they can't afford healthcare. They can't rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on, they can't rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education, and you cannot seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.




