As I reported on Tuesday, former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump was scheduled to sit down on Wednesday for a Q&A with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) at their annual convention. The panel was hosted by ABC senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Semafor congressional correspondent Kadia Goba, and Fox News senior correspondent Harris Faulkner.
The first unforced error: The panel started 35 minutes late because NABJ had some form of equipment failure. Let that sink in: a convention full of journalists and technicians who do this type of stuff in their sleep, was unable to get things working properly for a pivotal conversation with the former president and leading candidate for president in 2024. Highly suspect, and even more unprofessional.
The panelists took the stage, and ABC’s Rachel Scott quickly gave an introduction, then introduced Trump, who took the stage and shook her hand before sitting down. You could tell he was clearly on his guard. His hackles rose even more after the openly hostile diatribe and baited question by Scott.
RACHEL SCOTT: Mr. President we so appreciate you giving us an hour of your time. I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir.
A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today. You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former president Barack Obama saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true.
You have told four Congress women of color who were American citizens to go back to where they came from. You have used words like “Animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys, you’ve attacked Black journalists calling them a loser, saying the questions that they asked are “both stupid and racist.”
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?
Instead of asking Trump to give reasons why Black voters should vote for him, Scott turned into the “LANGUAGE POLICE,” and couched the narrative that it is what Trump says, and not what he does, that is why “Black people” do not like him. Trump rightly called her out on the rude and disingenuous line of questioning.
TRUMP: 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 are a fake news network, a terrible network. And I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country. Including employment, including opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, which is one of the greatest programs ever for Black workers and Black entrepreneurs. I’ve done so much, and you know I say this: historically Black colleges and universities were out of money, they were stone-cold broke, and I saved them, and I gave them long-term financing, and nobody else was doing it. I think it’s a very rude introduction. I don’t know exactly why you would do something like that. And let me go a step further, I was invited here, and I was told my opponent—whether it was Biden or Kamala—I was told my opponent was going to be here. It turned out my opponent isn’t here. You invited me under false pretense.
Once again, Trump called them out on their duplicity. If it was truly about “opportunities like these both to inform our reporting but also to help voters understand the choices that they face in a consequential and historic election year,” as Scott introduced at the top of the panel, then why wasn’t Vice President Kamala Harris present to do that as well? It seems what the organizers really wanted were “gotcha” moments that worked into their narrative. They got more than that, and in spades. Trump continued:
TRUMP: Then you said you can’t do it with Zoom. Well, where’s Zoom? She’s [Harris] going to do it with Zoom, and she’s not coming. Then you were a half an hour late. Just so you understand, I have too respect for you to be late. They couldn’t get their equipment working or something was wrong.
R SCOTT: Mr. President I would love for you to answer the question…
TRUMP: I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln. That’s my answer.
R SCOTT: Better than President Johnson who signed the Voting Rights Act?
TRUMP: That’s my answer. And for you to start off a question and answer period, especially when you’re 35 minutes late, because you couldn’t get your equipment to work, in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace.
I am not sure what Scott expected, but it certainly wasn’t to be shut down, and she was. And leave it to a Democrat apparatchik to invoke Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of the most racist presidents in history, second only to Woodrow Wilson. While Johnson claims the Voting Rights Act, it was overwhelming Republican support that allowed it to be passed into law. So, Scott is either not much of a journalist or not very bright, to bypass these factors.
Had Scott done some research, and was really serious, she would not have tried to lead with this question. Sadly, Scott wasn’t content and wanted to exact her pound of flesh. She asked another gotcha question that had to do with policing Trump’s (and Republicans’) language on VP Kamala Harris being a DEI hire. What Scott ended up doing was leaving it wide open for Trump to make the case that Harris is not just a DEI hire, but a manufactured fraud.
R SCOTT: Let me just ask a follow-up sir, then we’ll move on to other questions here. Some of your own supporters, including Republicans on Capitol Hill have labeled Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the first Black and Asian woman to serve as Vice President and be on a major party ticket, as a DEI hire. Is that acceptable language to you? And will you tell those Republicans and those supporters to stop it?
The only thing missing was Scott wagging her finger in his face. Trump countered.
TRUMP: How do you define DEI? Go ahead. How do you define it?
R SCOTT: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
TRUMP: Is that your definition? Give me a definition.
SCOTT: Those are the words for, “DEI,” Sir. I’m asking you a question, I’ve defined it for you. Do you believe VP Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?
The response was actually quite epic.
TRUMP: Well, I can say, maybe it’s a little bit different. I’ve known her for a long time indirectly, not directly so much. She was always of Indian heritage and 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. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?
SCOTT: She’s always identified as a Black woman.
TRUMP: You know what? I respect either one, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t. Because she was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person. And I think someone should look into that too, when you ask and continue in a very hostile, nasty tone.
SCOTT: It’s a direct question, sir, do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is a DEI hire?
TRUMP: I really don’t know. I mean, I really don’t know. Could be, could be. There are some.
Trump showed he had had quite enough of Scott by pivoting to Harris Faulkner, who, no matter what station she works for, is a seasoned journalist who knows not to ask baited questions. Trump complimented Faulkner, calling her “a fantastic person.” Faulkner had actually interviewed him on July 13, before the attempted assassination. So, Faulkner gets credit for not only bringing that subject back into the forefront, but also asking questions that were prescient to policy and to the actual campaign.
TRUMP: My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly, a lot of problems with it, but one of the big problems, and a lot of the journalists in this room I know and have great respect for, a lot of the journalist in this room are Black. I will tell you, that coming from the Border are millions and millions of people who happen to be taking Black jobs. You had the best—
HARRIS F: I want to talk about why you’re here today. It is not lost on us how divided we are as a country. As you were coming today, we really got to see that we were divided along the lines of race, along the lines of gender. There is this question of, in this moment where we are, why come here? What is your message today?
Partisan hack Rachel Scott embarrassed herself further by interjecting, “What exactly is a Black job, sir?”
TRUMP: A Black job is anybody that has a job, that’s what it is, anybody who has a job. They are taking the employment away from Black people.
Another unforced error by Scott, because it not only allowed Trump to discuss the horrible situation at the Southern border but to anchor it to Vice President Kamala Harris. The legacy media has spent the past week trying to rewrite and scrub any mention of this from her history, and with one stupid question, Scott brought it all back.
TRUMP: The first group of people, the Black population is affected most by that, and Kamala is allowing it to happen. She’s the Border Czar, she’s the worst Border Czar in the history of the world, there’s never been a Border Czar like this. She’s never even, essentially, she says she’s been there once, but not the right part of the border.
These people are coming into our country and taking Black jobs, and Hispanic jobs, and frankly, their taking Union jobs. Unions are being very badly affected by all the millions of people pouring into our country.
And one thing Harris, as we discussed, many of these people are coming in from mental institutions, from prisons, from jails, they’re gang members, and other countries. Other countries are setting loose their prisoners, they’re opening up their prisons and their mental institutions and they’re taking their bad people: drug dealers, gang members, and they’re bringing them into the United States. And by the way, their crime rate is going down, and our crime rate is going to be a disaster.
So, the Black journalists may not have been happy with Trump’s answers, but Black voters were affirmed on two points that the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrats wish to ignore: Kamala Harris is the Border Czar, and an ineffective, fake Black woman, and this influx on the Border is costing employment as well as safety for Black Americans in particular, and all Americans in general.
Faulkner asked another layered, yet thoughtful question about policy, not personality.
HARRIS F: I want to get into how you address some of the issues in Black communities. And I say that plural, because we live in “Communities of Color” that are different. We’re not all the same, we don’t vote the same, we don’t think the same, it’s not all monolithic.
Faulkner talked about the rising credit debt and laid out statistics, as well as the toll inflation is having on the Black community. She asked, “What’s your plan for the Black community when it comes to money?”
TRUMP: The inflation is absolutely destroying our middle class, our working class, virtually every class. Inflation is a disaster in our country. Inflation is a country buster, it breaks every country. And we had, in my opinion, the worst inflation we’ve ever had—they say it’s 58 years but I think it’s much more than that—it’s been devastating. And if you just take a look at a lot of the things they don’t include. Like interest rates. Interest rates went from 2.4 percent to 10 percent and you can’t get the money.
People can’t buy houses. They no longer have the American Dream. Young people, young Black people, they don’t have the American Dream anymore. They can’t buy a house, they can’t borrow the money because of the cost of the money. They can’t buy it because of the cost of housing, because of the cost to build it, because of inflation. Inflation is a disaster and it’s destroying our country and it’s destroying the Black community, probably as much or more than anything else.
Here was another win for the Trump campaign. What may seem like a long and rambling response is actually him acknowledging that there is indeed a problem. As opposed to months and years of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin, the useless Press Secretary Karine-Jean Pierre, President Joe Biden, and VP Kamala Harris gaslighting Americans that there is no problem and it’s all in their heads.
HARRIS F: What’s your plan?
TRUMP: You know what we have to do, we have to bring down cost of energy, and that’s going to bring down the cost of inflation. This was all started by a bad energy policy by Joe Biden.
This created another opening for Trump–to be able to discuss the bloodless coup of Biden being forced out of the campaign for 2024 and being conveniently replaced by Harris. Trump pointed out that their campaign was prepared to tackle one opponent, and then had to quickly shift to tackle another.
TRUMP: Ultimately it’s the same, because they have bad policy. They have policies of open borders, unbelievable open borders, horrible energy policies.
This gave Trump another chance to discuss ALL the bad policies of the Biden-Harris administration without rebuttal. He then brought it back to the effect of inflation on the Black community.
TRUMP: The inflation is the thing that’s hurting the Black worker, the Black population, and every other population within our country. Inflation is the worst its been, I think in over a hundred years.
Semafor’s Kadia Goba finally got a chance to ask her question about police immunity. But as is typical of legacy press, the phrasing of her question did not allow for any cogent discussion on why the policy exists and why good police need some form of protection in order to do their job effectively.
The rest went as expected. A few cogent, but mostly ridiculous questions surrounding Trump’s VP pick JD Vance. Ever since the Left has been fixated on Vance’s past comments about families, childless women, and cat ladies, certain loud voices on the Right have been trying to force a referendum on the viability of the VP candidate and whether he is dragging down the ticket. Scott again poured milk on stupid and gulped it down, asking, ” Did you know he had these views?” The RNC spends millions of dollars and countless hours digging into candidates’ past, but yeah, Rachel, Trump was not aware of his views. <insert *eyeroll* emoji>
Faulkner asked the question that got an answer that is a reflection of what Trump deems important not only in a VP candidate, but what elicits respect and admiration from him as a person. Faulkner interjected, “Why did you choose him?” Trump gave a full-throated, 10-toes down response.
In a later exchange, Trump also made the solid point that they are not electing the vice president. He is at the top of the ticket, so who people are voting for is him and him alone. Ultimately, the Black men and women who are leaning in his direction are fine with Trump being Trump, and that’s exactly who he was at the NABJ.
What Black voters received were answers to the concerns they have been expressing for three years, and some policy prescriptions that might give them some relief. That’s infinitely more than a show with Megan Thee Stallion twerking, and feel-good bromides over the first “Black” female candidate.
Related: Blacks Loudly Declare Their Lack of Support for a Kamala Harris Presidency
