Donald Trump and The National Association of Black Journalists: Watch For Yourself
Screengrab of NABJ Panel discussion with Donald Trump
Former President Donald Trump and the National Association of Black Journalist were scheduled for a one-hour panel discussion. They made it 35 minutes.
Watch it for yourself here: (WTVC NewsChannel 9)
Donald Trump’s question-and-answer session with Black journalists in Chicago became contentious almost immediately.
The former president was argumentative in responding to the first question, from moderator Rachel Scott of ABC News.
Scott’s first question was prefaced with a recitation of Trump’s past statements, including Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, and Trump’s past treatment of Black journalists.
“Why should Black voters trust you, after you have used language like that?” Scott asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said.
“You don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network,” Trump said, as some in the audience at the Hilton Chicago jeered.
“I love the Black population of this country,” Trump said, continuing to interrupt Scott as she tried to press for an answer.
“I think it’s a very nasty question. … I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”
Trump also argued with Scott over her question that some Republicans have referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive nominee, as “a DEI candidate.”
First he asked for a definition, and Scott reminded Trump DEI stands for “diversity, equity, inclusion.” She then tried to pin him down on whether Republicans are saying Harris is the nominee based only on her race and gender.
Trump contended that Harris hadn’t previously identified as Black, but now does.
“She was always of Indian heritage. She was only promoting Indian heritage, I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said.
“So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? … I respect either one but she obviusly doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
Harris, who has a mother of Indian heritage and a Black father, always has identified as Black and attended Howard University, a prominent historically Black school.
Trump’s appearance at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists ran late. He walked out about 1:15 p.m., later than the scheduled noon, then blamed the delay on NABJ’s own audio issues, a point he brought up repeatedly during questions.
“You’re the one that held me up for 35 minutes,” he said at one point. He also complained about having a hard time hearing some questions, and one of the questioners said she was having audio problems as well.
Things settled down a bit after a contentious beginning, with Trump touching on a range of topics, including jobs, inflation and border security among them — though in nearly each case, he was often repeating previously-debunked claims, such as that inflation is at its highest point in a century.
Trump argued with the moderator over some of the questions he faced during an appearance Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention at the Hilton Chicago.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
At one point, Trump was asked if he would step down if his health declined: “Oh absolutely. I think I’d know. I think I’d know.”Besides Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, the others on the panel were Harris Faulkner of Fox News, and Kadia Goba, politics reporter at Semafor. Goba interviewed Trump this year, and Faulkner sat down with Trump this month.
So, what say you? Discuss in the comments.
“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went, she became a Black person,”
This comment is worse than anyone can imagine even by Trump standards. The interview was apparently so bad that even Fox News couldn’t whitewash it (sorry, not sorry).Report
He is probably five clicks at most from using the n-word in a hot micReport
He’s been in front of microphones for 40 years, but sure, your fanfic could come true.Report
Thom Brennaman might serve as an alternate example.Report
Yeah, and in those 40 years he managed to only brag about committing sexual assault on tape once!Report
And only took out a full page ad in the NYT demanding the lynching of young black men only once!Report
And yet the GOP believe he is their savior.Report
Make it okay to say the n-word again.Report
TFG has always felt it was ok to say it. So do a vast number of his followers.Report
THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES ARE MARVELOUS AND NOT AT ALL RACIST!Report
And the day before he managed to insult most Jewish Americans by calling us really crappy: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/politics/video/trumps-obsession-with-bad-jewsReport
Watch Trump tighten the interviewer’s water because he did not like the questions. He is a childish bully: https://x.com/remy2cents/status/1818724810589192686?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1818724810589192686%7Ctwgr%5E5f17842642a33816e049cc758631e34f2ad1b98f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14342720https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143427t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F072Ftrump-imploding-on-live-tvt_e%3DTrump20imploding20on20live20TVt_d%3DTrump20imploding20on20live20TV20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DTrump20imploding20on20live20TVs_o%3Ddescversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
“That’s an interesting political strategy. Whaddya call it?
“THE ARISTOCRAT!”Report
Apparently the campaign is running with the idea that Kamala can only be Indian-American or African-American but not both. What they think are “gotcha” headlines and quotes are being projected on screens at the Harrisburg rally going on right now.
Presumably, the campaign people, or Trump, or both, believe this will be to their net advantage.Report
I’ve been spending a small amount of time within some 90s pop culture and this totally feels like something that would have happened in the 90s.
“Authentic!”
Remember when that word was the important one?
I still don’t understand why Troy was the right choice in Reality Bytes… anyway.
Criticisms of OJ Simpson during his trial talked about how he abandoned being Black the second they offered him that Hertz money but the second he kills his wife suddenly he wants to be Black again.
So we’ve got a politician here who spent a great deal of time being “Indian” and then, when it was time to become Black, whammo. Now she’s Jamaican.
“She’s not *AUTHENTICALLY* Black!”
The 1990’s called. They want their neuroses back.Report
I do not miss the purity tests of my youth…
Kamala Harris chose to go to Howard University, which is, of course, one of the best-known of the Historically Black colleges. While at Howard, she chose to rush Alpha Kappa Alpha, which is a prominent sorority for black women. As far as I know, she’s never been anything other than vocally proud of those associations.Report
They appear to be really going for it: https://bsky.app/profile/convolutedname.bsky.social/post/3kymcatyhck2oReport
Wow — Lara Loomer puzzling over birth certificates. It’s like it’s still 2008.Report
To that point, and to this larger conversation, Harris’ background is highly conducive to turning hard post racial, which if she does I would predict turns this into a decisive victory for her. The question is whether her and the Democratic party are still constitutionally capable of such a thing. Unfortunately I have my doubts.Report
Post-racial would change everything.
I think that Trump is betting on Black people being racist and Indian people being *REALLY* racist and seeing the different pretzels that Kamala ties herself into.
Jokes on him! Indians and Black people *CAN’T* be racist!Report
Or maybe he’s just planning on white liberals being white liberals.Report
That would be his glass half full and the best way to keep it really close.Report
Kamala’s response should be “Why is he the only one talking about race here?”Report
That would be a really good response.Report
She did even better, I think:
“”Today, we were given yet another reminder. This afternoon, Donald Trump spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, and it was the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect. Let me just say, the American people deserve better,” the vice president said in remarks at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority event in Houston.
She continued: “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who does not respond to hostility and anger with confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said at a panel discussion at the gathering of Black journalists in Chicago that Harris “happened to turn Black” a few years ago, claiming that “all of a sudden, she made a turn” in her identity.
Harris did not specifically respond to Trump’s false claims, which he made after an interviewer asked him whether he agreed with Republicans on Capitol Hill who have characterized Harris as a “DEI hire.”
“Ours is a fight for the future,” the vice president told the audience in Houston. “And it is a fight for freedom.”Report
See, this is one of the reasons I’m really starting to like Harris.
Trump will continue to spout things about her race that generate a lot of discussion, a lot of condemnation of him, things that disgust people, and she doesn’t have to join in at all. The media are going to step forwards and correct the record, they’re going to talk about this, she doesn’t have to.
She understands that when your enemy is making a mistake, you don’t interrupt them.
Moreover, now it’s only the Republicans who are talking about race, and the only way that they’re talking about it is to attack someone’s race. Good job Republicans!Report
Someone needs to do a word search of Truth Social for “Quadroon.”Report
My theory is that Trump and his team are still totally off guard with Harris and trying to find what will work against her. They also don’t know how to respond to mockery.Report
When I worked in DC, I knew someone who was pretty deep inside Obama’s inner campaign circle. She shared that they were totally caught of guard with the Palin VP pick because they never anticipated her. She spoke about what a smart move it was because it caused their team to scramble to find their counters. But they took time to do so (and Tina Fey did her thing) and were able to respond and prevail.
How was Trump’s team so unprepared for Harris? And why not take time to formulate a plan?Report
1. Obama’s team is a lot smarter than Trump’s team;
2. In some fairness, I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume Biden would just stubborn it out until the convention.
3. See # 1Report
Yes, yes, I was largely being rhetorical. But even if you think Biden is 90/10 to remain in, no one works on a Break-in-case-of-emergency Kamala plan?Report
You have to be an exceptional level of stupid to be running a campaign to try to get Biden to drop out, and not contend with the possibility that he might drop out.
Then again, we had the court overturned Roe v Wade, and the response of the Biden administration was, like a week later, ‘We’re going to get a committee to look into this’, because they apparently didn’t notice that has been a known Republican goal for 30 years and Trump didn’t deliberately put people on the Supreme Court to do that. Who could have guessed that that would happen and anyone would have to deal with it?!
Honestly, sometimes people in politics are some of the dumbest people who have ever existed, with apparently no ability to make plans for very obvious things that could very easily happen.Report
Even if you don’t expect Biden to drop out, he could have a stroke or break a hip or be forced out in any number of ways. The VP is an obvious choice for successor.Report
Multi-racial is the fastest growing ethnic identity in the country but sure, GOP, crap all over them.Report
The GOP base is too stupid to understand (or is too tied to its prejudices to appreciate) that more likely than not ‘multiracial’ in this country isn’t going to look like what they fear it will, nor what the silliest intersectionalists pray it will. It’s going to look like a lot of people with some Latin American and Asian ancestry who through intermarriage and assimilation are vaguely white enough. The only thing that could complicate it is blunt, heavy handed government classifications with benefits attached to them.Report
I legitimately think Trump or at least some of his dumber supporters might legitimately think she’s not really black in a Rachel Doezeal-like way.Report
Sadly, you might be right.Report
If that is what’s happening it is deeply ignorant but also strangely hilarious.Report
Former advisor to Donald Trump Sebastian Gorka on Vice President Harris: “She’s a disaster whose only qualifications was having a vagina and the right skin color. She’s a DEI hire. She’s a woman! She’s colored!”Report
I’ll take “White Fragility” for $1,000, Alex.Report
Trump aide: “Man, we’re taking a beating with Vance out there being so weird and creepy. Whatever can we do to shift the headlines away from him?”
Trump: “Step aside, I got this.”Report
Trump says Lincoln never took a bullet: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/09909102d75696fb0d0d4e518e308420339797bbe79d6b258a798400d0598510.jpgReport
That’s either fake or he deleted it from his feed.Report
Trump should see if he can get a Phil Hellmuth endorsement.Report
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said.
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Just a note that having his own words repeated back to him is out of bounds horrible.
LOL this guy.Report
I wonder if Trump ever played golf in an event with Tiger Woods.Report
https://golf.com/lifestyle/celebrities/how-why-president-trump-cheats-golf-playing-tiger-woods/
“In fact, he did cheat with Tiger Woods. Not long after becoming president, Trump invited Woods, Dustin Johnson (the No. 1 player in the world at the time), and longtime Tour pro and Fox golf analyst Brad Faxon to play.”
I know that wasn’t your point, I just had to share some of Rick Reilly’s excellent writing. I read the book this article was excerpted from and the disgust with Trump’s golf cheating was very explicit.Report
There’s two different games. One of them is golf, where there are written rules that are basically “play the ball as it lies” plus exceptions where that’s not physically possible. The other is the golf-like game where you make up the rules as you go. The latter is fine, as long as everyone knows that’s what you’re playing.Report
Thanks for the link, though I must say I had a brief, very disturbing vision of Trump cheating with Tiger Woods.Report
I said once that conservatives love their token minorities because to them, the entire conversation about racism is a scam to give unfair advantage to minorities.
This line of attack against Harris is part of that. Trump very obviously considers women and nonwhite people beneath him, but vehemently insists that racism and sexism aren’t real things, but merely cynical ploys to manipulate white males into positions of weakness.Report