President Donald Trump went on the attack while appearing onstage at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago in a contentious appearance that quickly went off the rails and saw the candidate repeating lies about his past policy toward Black communities and questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ identity as a Black woman.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said from the stage at the Chicago Hilton. “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. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?
“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went — she became a Black person,” the candidate added about Harris, who is of both Jamaican and Indian heritage. “I think somebody should look into that too.”
Prior to this, Trump replied to ABC News’ Rachel Scott after she opened the panel by reiterating his statements toward and about Black communities and asking why they should support him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible way,” he said, berating Scott, one of the panel’s three moderators. “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”
The crowd at the Chicago Hilton booed as the former president criticized the media professionals onstage for being “rude” and “35 minutes late because you couldn’t get your equipment to work.” Trump then said that he was invited to the convention under false pretenses, adding that he expected that his opponent would be there, too — be it President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who is not yet scheduled to attend the convention.
The former president fell into familiar tropes as he attempted to demonize immigrants and pit the Black population against them: “People in this room and people outside this room are going to be losing their jobs to people who came into this country illegally,” he said.
As the questions continued from the panel, which included Scott, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and Kadia Goba, politics reporter at Semafor, Trump continued to lay into the ABC News senior congressional correspondent, calling Scott “nasty” for her initial question. Shouts from the crowd of “false” and angry booing were intermittently heard as he spoke.
Trump also spent some time doing damage control on his VP pick, J.D. Vance, and ultimately downplayed the power of a running mate after questions were asked about the junior senator’s remarks about women who do not have children. Toward the end of the event, the candidate said that on day one of his presidency, if he were to win, he would “close the border” and bring energy prices and interest rates down.
“I want people to come into our country, but they have to be vetted, and they have to be checked,” he told the crowd.
Trump left the stage shaking his head after it was announced that his campaign team had decided to cut his appearance short.
Prior to Trump’s appearance, NABJ convention co-chair Karen Attiah, a columnist for The Washington Post, said she resigned from her post.
Meanwhile, other prominent members decried the platforming of a candidate with a history of attacking the media and hurling racist comments toward Black women reporters.
The convention, which started Wednesday and runs through Aug. 4, brings together upwards of 3,500 media, technology and business professionals. In her X post announcing her departure from the event’s leadership, Attiah wrote, “To the journalists interviewing Trump, I wish them the best of luck” and wrote that she was not consulted “in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”
Trump’s appearance at the event was announced in a press release on Sunday and launched a firestorm of criticism among Black media professionals. In the announcement, NABJ president Ken Lemon pointed out that the NABJ does not endorse political candidates as a journalism organization and “welcomes the opportunity for them to ask the tough questions that will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know.”
The Trump campaign wrote that he had “accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history” in a statement announcing his appearance in Chicago.
The former president is looking to court the Black vote in the November election, particularly after an Angus Reid Institute survey of 1,743 registered voters showed that just 12 percent of Black voters polled said they’re backing his campaign. But that stands in sharp contrast to his history with Black reporters. In 2018, while speaking to a scrum of reporters outside of the White House, Trump called April Ryan a “loser” and “very nasty”; this was after he asked Ryan at a 2017 news conference if, as a Black woman, she could help set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. Posting on X, Ryan, who is currently the White House correspondent for The Grio and was 2017’s NABJ’s journalist of the year, bristled at the news of Trump’s appearance at the convention.
“The reports of attacks on Black women White House correspondents by the then-president of the United States are not myth or conjecture but fact,” Ryan wrote, referring to the invitation as “a slap in the face” to Black women journalists “who had to protect themselves from the wrath of this Republican presidential nominee who is promoting an authoritarian agenda that plans to destroy this nation and her democracy with his Project 2025.”
Meanwhile, organizers of the convention are on damage control. As the backlash grew, Atlanta Journal-Constitution correspondent Tia Mitchell, chair of the NABJ’s Political Journalism Task Force, defended what she said was her decision to invite the GOP presidential nominee: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.”
Following that post, Mitchell made her X account private but opened it up Wednesday.
A note from Lemon on Wednesday assured attendees that Harris was invited to speak in Chicago well before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, but her schedule will not permit her to attend in person or virtually. This is still the case, Lemon wrote in the note, and the NABJ is looking at options for Harris to speak to the group in September.
However, citing an anonymous source, Ryan reports at The Grio that the NABJ team initially had denied a request for Harris to appear in a virtual fireside chat but then, according to multiple sources, was scrambling this week to get the vice president’s team to consider a virtual town hall after the backlash surrounding Trump’s appearance grew. Team Harris declined as the NABJ had already declined the idea of a virtual appearance, Ryan reports.
Lemon also explained that the Trump invitation is protocol and consistent with past election year conventions.
“I consulted with a group of our founders and past NABJ presidents Tuesday on-site in Chicago, and as a group, we affirmed that the invitation to former President Trump was in line with NABJ’s usual practices since 1976,” Lemon wrote. “It has always been our policy to ensure that candidates know that an invitation is not an endorsement. We also agreed that while this race is much different — and contentious — so are the consequences.”
Former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton attended NABJ conventions while serving in office or as candidates.
