Source: Jason Armond / Getty
Who actually thought that Donald Trump in a room of real, Black, seasoned journalists wasn’t going to be a whole disastrous insult to Black people–to reasonable people of any race?
When it was first announced that Donald Trump was invited to participate in a Q&A session at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention in Chicago, plenty of people warned it was a bad idea. Plenty of Black people, especially Black journalists, understood that given Trump’s yuge reputation for blindly bashing what he persistently calls “fake news” the media and journalists, especially Black journalists, inviting him to the NABJ cookout would be a slap in the face to Black people, Black media and the yearly convention, which, if you’ve ever attended, you know is a festival of sorts, not just for Black journalism, but for the culture.
The contrarian counterpoint posed by the online Union of Devil’s Advocates, of course, was essentially: “But they’re journalists, right? Shouldn’t they want to be objective? Shouldn’t they want to hear all sides? Like it or not, Trump is running for president and he deserves to be heard! Don’t be cowards, Black journalists! Be fair and balanced!”
When Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah announced the day before the event that she was stepping down as co-chair of the convention and made it clear it was due, at least in part, to Trump’s invitation, she was scolded and told she wasn’t a real journalist by Trump supporters and non-Trump supporters alike.
Apparently, some people had it in their heads that Trump’s NABJ invite was an opportunity for Black journalists to hit Trump with tough but relevant questions and engage the former president in a real discussion about the socioeconomic concerns of the Black community.
Here’s my question to those people: Have you ever even seen a Trump interview?
As it turned out, Trump’s NABJ appearance was a sh*t show that might be called an “epic” sh*t show if it weren’t so easily predictable. NABJ invited Trump to its event so that Trump could insult Black media, Black journalists, and, especially Black women journalists to their faces while repeating lies from his list of alternative facts and throwing a tantrum wherever he was asked questions he didn’t want to answer, which, ultimately meant answering zero questions.
When Rachel Scott, the senior congressional correspondent for ABC—and, in all honesty, the only one of the event’s three panelists who seemed to have the gumption to address the orangey-white nationalist elephant in the room—asked Trump about his racism and his insults to the media, specifically Black media, he lashed out at her as if he was dumbfounded that he was invited to a Black event to answer questions that are relevant to Black people.
“You attack Black journalists, calling them ‘a loser,’ saying the questions that they asked are, quote, ‘stupid and racist,’” Scott said to Trump. “You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So my question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you, after you have used language like that?”
A lot of people thought Scott was being overly aggressive by coming straight out of the box with these questions before Trump even had a chance to get settled in his seat, but, honestly, her question was light work. She could have gone on for days. She could have asked Trump why Black people should believe he isn’t racist when he told Black and brown congresswomen to “go back where they came from,” despite them all being born and/or raised in America.
She could have asked about the lawsuit the Department of Justice filed against him over anti-Black housing discrimination in the ’70s, or about an assertion he once made that, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.” She could have noted that Trump has both claimed Black voters have been flocking to him because he’s being treated unfairly by the justice system just as we have while also asserting that systemic racism isn’t real, which is why he:
- Spearheaded the propaganda-reliant attack on critical race theory
- Issued an executive order banning diversity training in the workplace during his presidency, and,
- Is now promising to end all DEI programs across America if he’s elected again.
She could have grilled him about his call for the execution of the Exonerated Five, or why he advocated for the military to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the streets during nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd.
Scott could have gone much further than she did with her opening question to Trump, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because Trump’s response would have been the same angry, whiney, hyper-white-privileged and childish non-response.
Here’s Trump’s out-of-the-gate response:
“First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, a first question. 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, also whining that Scott’s perfectly reasonable and relevant question was “nasty.”
First of all, Trump is, per usual, lying. He’s lying about never before being asked such a question in what he considers a “horrible manner.” Of course, he’s been asked before about his constant personal insults to his detractors and his rude, offensive and bigoted behavior. It’s his responses to those questions that are always the same, and they always end with him throwing a fit, especially when it’s Black journalists who persecute him by, well—asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer but should certainly be able to if he wants our votes.
From theGrio:
It is a fact that Trump told the 2017 NABJ Journalist of the Year to “sit down” when theGrio’s White House Correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief April Ryan confronted him about voter suppression. During a White House press briefing, Trump’s press secretary called for 2018 Journalist of the Year Jemele Hill to be fired. After 2020 NABJ Journalist of the Year Yamiche Alcindor caught him in a lie, Trump wondered why “you people act” so negatively, warning Alcindor to “be nice.” Yet those attacks pale in comparison to Trump’s tweets about Black journalist Don Lemon.
What Black people knew, what Attiah knew, what Scott likely knew and what anyone who has ever heard Trump speak should damn well have known is that Trump’s invite had a zero percent chance of resulting in an informative and fact-based discussion and sharing of opposing ideas that are relevant in the upcoming presidential race. How many times does he have to tell us who he is?
Every interview or speaking engagement Trump participates in is an opportunity for him to attack people he doesn’t like and repeat thoroughly debunked lies while damning the “fake news” media without catching a whiff of his own irony. His appearances in Black spaces are never about anything but a substanceless “Black friend” photo-op to bolster his campaign. His NABJ appearance was no different, and people who know things knew there was never a chance it would be.
At one point, Trump blamed NABJ’s “bad equipment” for why his interview started nearly two hours late, but journalists who were there, like HuffPost Deputy Editor Philip Lewis, said they were told “Trump is demanding that NABJ not do the live fact-checking and that’s why the event hasn’t started yet,” which is a more believable explanation since fact checks are to Trump what kryptonite is to Superman.
PolitiFact did provide a website for “live fact-checking”—which, per usual, noted that Trump lied dozens of times—but Attiah, who live-tweeted the event, confirmed that the fact-checkers were not in the room as they should have been.
Besides Trump’s dodging of facts and hard questions, all he did during his appearance is remind us that he doesn’t actually know, let alone care, about Black people. He really thought he’d run the same talking points in front of NABJ’s audience that he does in front of his MAGA cult audiences.
He thought it would go over well with Black people when he whitesplained that Kamala Harris isn’t really Black, saying, “I didn’t know she was Black,” and that “she happened to turn Black” before he asked, “Is she Indian or is she Black?” If Trump actually knew Black people, he would have known how far out of his Caucasian lane he was by even questioning Harris’ Blackness at all.
Trump also thought calling Harris a “DEI” hire was going to go over as well with us as it does his caucasity-indoctrinated constituency of loud and proud racists as if Black people haven’t been clocking “DEI hire” as white people’s new version of the N-word.
He also didn’t know anything about the case of Sonya Massey, which Black media has covered extensively.
He thought it would go over well with Black people when he insisted that Jan. 6 convicts were victims of “two systems of justice.”
He thought he could run that stale and ahistorical line about how he was “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” proving he knows nothing about Lincoln outside of the fact that the slaves were freed on his watch–and because of their own determination, not the 16th President’s.
So, NABJ invited Trump to a Black space just so he could lie and insult the intelligence of Black journalists, which is all he was ever going to do. And now that the event has almost universally proven to be a disaster and a farce in the face of actual journalism, Black journalists across social media are engaging in a chorus line of “I told you so!”
Again, who was this for? Not Black people. All NABJ did was provide Trump with a Blackity-Black platform where he could lie, insult, dodge questions, be racist, and be self-serving and superficial in addressing Black issues. That’s not journalism, and NABJ should never have allowed it.
SEE ALSO:
NABJ Leader Defends Inviting Trump To Black Journalists Convention Amid Growing Outrage
