CHICAGO (CN) ー Former president Donald Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention on Wednesday, sparking backlash across Chicago and among Black journalists.
Protesters gathered outside the downtown Hilton hotel hosting the convention and continued demonstrating until after the former president had finished speaking. Black journalists and outlets also criticized NABJ leaders’ decision to invite Trump, who has a history of attacking the press, demeaning Chicago and making racist remarks.
Black Chicago-focused outlet The Triibe said in a Tuesday op-ed that Trump’s presence “will suck the air out of every panel, discussion and session on the opening day of the National Association of Black Journalists annual national conference as attention fixates on the former president.”
Carron Phillips, the 2016 NABJ Journalist of the Year, deemed the move “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history.”
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, the convention’s co-chair, announced on Tuesday that she was stepping down from the role and said she “was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”
On Wednesday while Trump was speaking to a panel of Black women journalists, Attiah further deemed the event a “charade.”
The suddenness of the decision was another point of criticism, as the association only announced that Trump would be speaking at its convention on Monday.
“I would like to unwelcome NABJ for surprising Chicago with this Trump news, a man who has threatened Chicago with state violence in his stump speeches — and attracts a white supremacist following to a Black affinity space,” the Triibe’s co-founder Morgan Elise Johnson said on social media Monday.
The NABJ itself defended the decision to invite Trump as a chance to vet him as a candidate. The association’s president Ken Lemon said Tuesday that inviting Trump was not the same as endorsing him, and pointed out that the NABJ regularly extends an invitation to all presidential candidates to speak at its convention.
“In this case, we have two presumptive nominees,” Lemon said. “We invited both of them. We got a yes from one of them,”
Lemon further said in a prepared statement that Vice President Kamala Harris informed NABJ officials she would not be able to attend the convention physically or virtually, after which the NABJ decided to still affirm Trump’s invitation. This claim was challenged by April Ryan, White House correspondent for Black-focused news outlet TheGrio and 2017 NABJ Journalist of the Year. She said her own sources had told her the NABJ was the one who “shut down the conversation for a virtual town hall.”
One local Black journalist who spoke with Courthouse News on condition of anonymity Wednesday said they sympathized the NABJ’s position, but still personally opposed Trump’s visit.
“I understand that he accepted an invitation that they extend to all presidential candidates, but I don’t like it,” the journalist said, adding, “It’s like inviting the KKK into a Black church.”
Trump’s visit rallied some of his Black supporters in Chicago, who staged a small counterprotest Wednesday across the street. George Blakemore, a fixture of Chicago City Council meetings sometimes jokingly referred to as “Chicago’s 51st alderman,” was among them.
Colonel Mary Ann Warren, another NABJ member who attended the convention, said she didn’t oppose Trump’s visit because of the association’s practice of vetting presidential candidates.
“It’s the tradition to invite both candidates, Republican and Democrat,” Warren told Courthouse News on Wednesday. She added she hoped Trump’s visit to Chicago would be a “learning experience” for people to see across political divides.
“We have to stop all this hatred on the surface,” she said.
Trump himself spoke for only a little over a half hour during a Q&A session hosted by ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and Semafor’s Kadia Goba. He took the stage more than an hour after the event was supposed to begin, and fielded questions from the panel of Black journalists on inflation, the Sonya Massey police killing, immigration, picking J.D. Vance as his running mate and disparaging comments he has made about Vice President Harris.
He took immediate offense to Scott’s opening line of questions about why Black voters should trust him, given his history of racist comments and actions.
“Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network,” Trump said.
The former president went on to accuse his hosts of inviting him “under false pretenses,” citing Harris’ absence, and blamed them for faulty equipment that he said made it hard to hear the panelists’ questions.
He also implied Harris had “decided” to be Black as well as of Indian and Jamaican heritage, saying “somebody should look into that.”
“Is she Indian or is she Black? 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,” Trump said when asked if he considered the vice president a “DEI hire.”
“Could be,” he eventually clarified.
Later in the speech, he compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.
“I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said.
Harris’ presidential campaign responded to Trump’s hostility on stage with its own attacks. The campaign said in a prepared statement Wednesday that his performance at the convention was “simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”
“The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people,” the Harris campaign said.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson further attacked Trump for his performance at the convention.
“He came, he complained, he lied,” the mayor said on social media.
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