The Man Donald Trump Called "My African American" Isn't Even a Trump Supporter

At a campaign rally Friday in Redding, California, Donald Trump took a moment to point at a random black man in the audience and yell, "Look at my African American over here! Look at him!"

It was a cringeworthy attempt to show his presidential campaign had at least one black supporter — despite being rife with racist overtones and facing low support among black voters.

But ready your Crying Jordan memes, America. In an interview with NPR this weekend, Trump's so-called "African American" revealed he isn't actually a Trump supporter; the "Veterans For Trump" sign he was holding over his head was merely a tool to shade him from the sun.

"I am not a Trump supporter," Gregory Cheadle told NPR on Sunday. "I am a free man. I am not chained to any particular party, and I refuse to be chained to any particular party."

Cheadle said Trump's comments last week did not offend him in the least.

"I was not offended by it because he had been speaking positively about black people prior to that statement," Cheadle told NPR. "People around me were laughing [at the fact] that he noticed me, and everybody was happy. It was a jovial thing."

Cheadle, a Republican, is running his own campaign to represent California's 1st district — which encompasses the northeast corner of the state, including Redding and Chico — in the United States House of Representatives. According to his website, if elected, Cheadle would spend his time trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which he claims "is more about government control of the masses than anything else."

Cheadle's feelings — and Trump's oddly possessive phrasing — aside, the Trump campaign and its rallies have become known for their hostility toward black attendees.

In St. Louis, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Fayetteville, North Carolina, black demonstrators — who have often disrupted the rallies to speak out against the candidate — have been violently attacked by white attendees.

Trump's prickly relationship with black Americans doesn't end there. He came under fire in November after retweeting an infographic from a neo-Nazi Twitter account that falsely claimed 81% of white homicide victims in 2014 were killed by black murderers (the real number is closer to 15%, according to CNN).

And in February, Trump declined to distance himself from former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who expressed his support for the businessman's campaign on his radio show.

"[Voting] against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage," Duke told listeners of the David Duke Radio Program, BuzzFeed reported.

According to six recent national polls compiled by FactCheck.org, between 4% and 10% of black voters polled are Donald Trump supporters. Unfortunately for the candidate, this small number makes them super hard to find en masse at his rallies — though they do tend to stand out in that blinding sea of whiteness.