Trump’s appearance at NABJ was the train wreck many expected

As expected, former President Donald Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday came with a barrage of bigotry and lies.

His appearance — which took the form of a panel discussion with three NABJ members moderating — cast a pall over the convention itself before Trump even showed up, to be honest.

The organization faced a deluge of denunciations from journalists and activists after it announced it would provide a platform to Trump, who has denigrated the free press, spread racist propaganda and repeatedly insulted black journalists. In fact, NABJ has issued several statements in recent years denouncing Trump’s illiberal behavior and attacks on its members.

NABJ announced before the panel that no one in the audience full of journalists would be allowed to ask questions. And the composition of the panel — specifically, the inclusion of Fox News host Harris Faulkner, who gave Trump friendly interviews on a network that helped spread Trump’s lies and paid a historic legal settlement for doing so — fueled suspicion that the NABJ was giving him GOP nominee, a relatively friendly platform to lie and peddle propaganda.

Before the event even began, Trump claimed on Truth Social that Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, “refused” to speak at the convention as he did. In reality, as confirmed by news outlets and NABJ leadership, a scheduling conflict prevented Harris from attending in person. And it was the NABJ leadership that refused to allow him to hold a virtual conversation with journalists at the convention. (NABJ said Wednesday that it is “under discussion” to hold a Q&A “virtually or in person in September.”)

When it came to the event itself, what many people predicted would be a train wreck lived up to those expectations. Although NABJ leadership assured critics that Trump would be fact-checked live on social media, PolitiFact’s dedicated feed did not catch all of his lies, and the panelists did not catch all of them in real time.

Trump began his appearance with a petulant attack on a moderator, ABC’s chief congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, who asked about his history of racist rhetoric.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible way,” Trump replied. “You don’t even say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ You’re with ABC because I think they’re a fake news network – a terrible network. And I think that’s a shame.”

He went on to claim that he had “done so much” for black people. Predictably, he had glowing things to say about Faulkner, whom he described as a “fantastic person”.

Then came the litany of lies. Trump lied and said Harris “happened to be black” a few years ago after decades of identifying only with her Indian heritage. Harris, of course, is an HBCU-educated black woman who has known she is black since she was a child, but Trump’s claims align with right-wing misinformation that claims Harris is not. really Black – despite her father being black Jamaican.

He lied — as he did during last month’s presidential debate and several times since then — about an “invasion” of immigrants from prisons and mental institutions taking “black jobs.” (The NABJ also honors non-US journalists. We wonder how some of them felt about this claim.)

He lied about the Democrats’ position on abortion, falsely claiming the party was in favor of being able to “execute” babies.

He lied about the criminal records against him, claiming they only exist because he is “a political opponent of two people who weaponized our justice system.”

He lied and claimed that those convicted for their actions at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 show that there are “two systems of justice.”

And when he wasn’t outright lying, he doubled down on troubling policies. For example, he was asked about his support for immunizing police against prosecution in response to the recent police killing of Sonya Massey. Trump said the incident “didn’t sit well with me,” but still did not back down from his previous calls to shield police from legal liability for abuse.

He said during the NABJ panel:

This car crash of an event was predicted by NABJ members. It sowed distrust and animosity among members towards the leadership of NABJ. This sparked an outcry outside the event, with a co-chair of the NABJ convention stepping down from her role and several speakers dropping out of planned talks.

It also highlighted some of the wider internal debates raging within the organisation. As the Columbia Journalism Review wrote in 2018, the NABJ has faced divisions over paradigm shifts in journalism, pitting some older members and other traditionalists against younger journalists “adapted to the fast pace of new media.” That rift was in play before this event, with some supporters of the jury arguing NABJ’s tradition of inviting presidential candidates justified inviting Trump this year and critics of the group arguing Trump’s tendency to lie with abandon — and the fact that most of his opinions illiberal have been broadcast for almost a decade – it justified a deviation from the norm.

I’m with the latter group. It’s fair that NABJ leadership suggested there were lingering questions about what a second Trump term might look like, but the group never adequately explained why Trump — a serial liar who targeted his members — was best suited to answer them, much less considering. the ability to do so without better handrails.