Gregory Cheadle, the man Trump called ‘my African American’, is leaving the GOP

Gregory Cheadle, of California, told “PBS NewsHour“ he believes the Republican Party is pursuing a “pro-white” agenda and using black people like him as “political pawns.”

“I’m just sick and tired of the way blacks and other people of color have been treated by this administration and by the GOP,” Cheadle told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday on “Erin Burnett OutFront.” He said he has been frustrated with Trump’s rhetoric on race and the lack of diversity in his administration and judicial appointments.

Trump singled out Cheadle at a rally in 2016 in an attempt to tout his support among African Americans. Exit polls of the 2016 election found that Trump received 8% of votes cast by African Americans, with 89% of them choosing Democrat Hillary Clinton. Opinion polls in the subsequent two-and-a-half years have found that he remains highly unpopular among African Americans.

Cheadle told Burnett he is now more critical of the 2016 moment when Trump said, “Look at my African American over here,” at a California rally. At the time, Cheadle told CNN he was not offended by Trump’s comment. Now, he said he questions Trump’s intent.

“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme,” Cheadle told PBS. “Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves.”

“When you look at his appointments for the bench: White, white, white, white, white, white, white,” Cheadle told PBS. “That to me is really damning to everybody else because no one else gets a chance because he’s thinking that the whites are superior, period.”

Cheadle is a 62-year-old real estate broker, according to PBS, and said he is running for Congress as an independent in 2020. The outlet reports he has in the past mounted four unsuccessful bids for Congress.

“We just haven’t had people called the names publicly that we have had with this administration,” Cheadle told PBS. “To stay on this ship now, as a black Republican, I couldn’t do it.”