Trump Surrogate Tweets Cartoon of Hillary in Blackface, Apologizes

Pastor Mark Burns has become one of the most fervent African-American surrogates for Donald Trump. Today, though, his zealotry got in the way of his judgment when he tweeted a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in blackface, NPR reported.

His tweet (now deleted) read: "Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again..See you again in 4 years."

The cartoon features Clinton in blackface standing at a podium holding a sign that read: "#@!* the police" as she says, "I ain't no ways tired of pandering to African-Americans."

"Burns apologized for the tweet Monday night in a video," the NPR report continued. "'Obviously many people were offended by my tweet and it was not at all my intention ... I really am a shepherd to God's people and the last thing I would want to do is offend people.' The tweet, he continued, was intended to shed light on how the Democratic Party has "been pandering and using black people just for their votes.'"

In his tweet, Burns wrote: ""Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again ... See you again in 4 years."

The cartoon is watermarked from the website ComicallyIncorrect.com.

Burns defended his tweet on MSNBC on Monday afternoon.

"I am standing by that picture ... The tweet is a frustration that I have as a black man here in America and how I see African-Americans in many cases ... are suffering throughout this country. And to see how, en masse, we have been voting for the Democratic Party, en masse, and yet we have very little to show for it."

NPR reported that Burns "acknowledged that blackface is offensive to black people, but added, 'What's more offensive is not so much that there's just blackface, but that millions of African-Americans are on welfare, thousands of African-Americans' - and that there is a large disparity in net worth between black and white families.

"Burns also retweeted an altered image of Clinton in dreadlocks."