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Over the last week, the U.S. National Association of Black Journalists held its annual NABJ Convention & Career Fair in Chicago, Illinois. But before the convention had even begun, tensions were high over one particularly controversial invitation: former President Donald Trump.
Just two days before the convention began, the NABJ announced that Trump would be taking the stage for a panel interview with Semafor’s Kadia Goba, FOX News’s Harris Faulkner, and ABC’s Rachel Scott — an invitation that is not particularly unusual for the convention during election years. In 2020, President Biden addressed the convention, and former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did the same four years prior. (Trump declined to attend on both of said occasions.)
So what differed here?
Former President Trump’s invitation had been contentious among convention organisers even before the decision was announced — for a plethora of reasons. Shortly after the news went public, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah announced her resignation as co-chair of the convention, and later expressed concerns that the conversation-style format of the event “would allow a White politician to make our Black press advocacy organisation into an instrument of his agenda” — particularly as journalists in the audience weren’t given the chance to press Trump on issues particular to black voters.
Others expressed concern over Trump’s past comments — citing past instances of the NABJ choosing to criticise the New York mogul over attacks on Black journalists, particularly Black women, while some journalists felt as if the visit allowed the Trump campaign to use the NABJ to shield himself from criticism over past racist comments.
Even the staunchest critics of the decision likely wouldn’t have been able to predict just how chaotic the event would truly be. With the interview starting over an hour late, Trump took to his own social media platform Truth Social to claim that the delay was due to a fault in speaker equipment — with some saying the late start “set the tone”
You can check out Trump's interview at the NABJ right here 👇
Just a few days later, Ken Lemon revealed a different chain of events: after minor audio problems had been solved, the former President had refused to go on stage if he would be fact-checked live, as the NABJ had planned to do — and in the moments before Trump took the stage, Lemon had been preparing to tell the audience that the interview would no longer be happening.
Nonetheless, ABC correspondent Rachel Scott attempted to push back against false and misleading claims made by the Republican nominee for president: correctly noting that Trump’s claims that “illegal aliens” were granted the right to vote and that the Democratic party had legalised abortion post-birth were both fake. These weren’t the only — nor the most unordinary — lies told by former President Trump over the course of the interview.
Trump promised to pardon those arrested during the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol -- where supporters of his stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win -- going as far as to claim that some of those convicted may be innocent. He doubled down on his previous line that immigrants were “stealing Black jobs,” and attacked both the interviewers and their employers over the course of the interview: calling ABC a “fake news network,” describing questions as nasty, and slamming interviewers as rude — all the while insisting he had been the best president for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.
Most notable of all was Trump’s false assertion that Vice President Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race. The former President, to gasps from the audience, claimed that the Vice President had “happened to turn Black” and had “only been of Indian heritage [...] until a number of years ago” — adding that she “could be” a ‘DEI hire’. (Vice President Harris, a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus has always identified as biracial — both Black and South Asian — and attended Howard University, a leading historically Black university, where she was a member of the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
After only 34 minutes — during which Donald Trump suggested the police officer responsible for the killing of Sonya Massey should have immunity, suggested that immigrants were coming to the United States from prisons and mental institutions, and compared the assault on the U.S. Capitol to Black Lives Matter protests — the Trump campaign cut the interview short.
While some have praised the NABJ for confronting the former President with his own words and with corrections to misleading statements, others have expressed the opinion that hosting Trump, especially in the aftermath of his actions, was an insult to the NABJ and its members. Many of those who argued that Trump should not have been welcomed watched their fears play out in real time last week — and as Trump took to Truth Social to claim he had “CRUSHED IT!”, many are still debating whether hosting the former President was the right choice to make.
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