PRESIDENTIAL RACE | Trump meets with minority leaders ahead of Clinton speech

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Republican Donald Trump is courting minority voters as rival Hillary Clinton prepares to deliver a speech that will accuse his campaign of fostering hate.

Trump met today with members of a new Republican Party initiative meant to train young – and largely minority – volunteers to drive up voter turnout among their peers.

His poll numbers falling behind Hillary Clinton's with less than three months until Election Day, Trump has been working to win over blacks and Latinos in an effort to broaden his appeal.

At rallies over the past week, the Republican presidential nominee cast Democratic policies as harmful to minority communities and urged them to give him a chance, despite his occasional use of inflammatory rhetoric.

"I've always had great relationships with the African-American community," Trump told the group, which included his former rival Ben Carson and South Carolina Pastor Mark Burns.

A day after labeling Clinton "a bigot" at a Mississippi rally, Trump continued making the case that Democrats have taken their minority support for granted.

"They've been very disrespectful, as far as I'm concerned, to the African-American population in this country," Trump said. He was joined in Mississippi by Nigel Farage, one of the architects of Britain's push to leave the European Union – a movement that succeeded, in part, because voters sought to block the influx of foreigners into the United Kingdom.

Many African-American leaders and voters have dismissed Trump's message – delivered to predominantly white rally audiences – as condescending and intended more to reassure undecided white voters that he's not racist, than to actually help minority communities.