Donald Trump onstage with Rachel Scott of ABC News, Kadia Goba of Semafor and Harris Faulkner of FOX News (Photo Credit: Nicole Joseph).
The Donald Trump interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention was the s–t show we all thought it would be.
It’s the Frog and the Scorpion all over again, where the former is surprised that it got stung by the latter even though it provided passage to him across a river. “What do you expect?” the Scorpion told the Frog. “It’s in my nature.”
So, it would follow that the “Special Conversation” featuring Trump would become the debacle we all expected, where he seemingly lied or eluded questions, rudely questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black identity, berated one of the Black women journalists on stage who was doing her job, and generally showed a lack of respect for the organization, its members, the venue and city that hosted him.
But what do we expect?
It’s in his nature.
***
NABJ has a tradition of inviting Presidential candidates to the convention to address the membership. It’s a privilege to go before a room of whip-smart, accomplished and highly attuned media professionals, where politicians can elaborate on campaign priorities and clarify lingering questions about their candidacies.
No matter their political persuasion, they are accorded the respect and the expectation of journalistic objectivity.
However, the segment of NABJ leadership that signed off on having the former President appear at the convention has erred fantastically.
When it comes to an unconventional, authoritarian candidate like Trump, with a proven history of espousing, supporting or endorsing anti-Black, racist, sexist, discriminatory, anarchic and generally unhinged behavior, who also has displayed a tendency toward not telling the truth and breaking the law, deserves no invitation to “the cookout” or, in this case, the platform of the NABJ Convention.
Let me be more explicit: Along with no invitation, journalists from all spheres of media should do what my grandmother Martha Mae used to say when someone or something doesn’t seem right. She would say, “Something in the milk ain’t clean,” and call it out for what it is.
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On Wednesday afternoon, the milk was dirty as mud.
We knew that when ABC News’s Rachel Scott, one of the moderators on the panel, asked a pointed yet fair question that was designed to give Trump the room to address his reputation as a malignant racist.
Scott began her question like this, “A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today,” she said. “You have told four congressmen, women of color, who were American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabbit’ to describe Black district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a ‘loser,’ saying the questions that they ask are ‘stupid and racist.’ You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort.”
(I’ll also add that he once called Black NFL players like Colin Kaepernick, who protested the national anthem over police brutality, a “son of b–tch.”)
“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?” Scott asked.
In the face of a legitimate question, Trump went to the old playbook:
“Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so – in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say, ‘Hello. How are you?'”
Then he insulted ABC, Scott’s employer, as a “fake news network” — employing the same ad hominem attack he often deploys against political rivals. His performance against Biden in that first debate comes to mind.
It’s in his nature.
Watching that “Special Conversation” play out in real time from a laptop on my dining room table hurt. To know that someone who was accorded the privilege and respect of being invited to NABJ’s trademark event only to treat that privilege with the respect accorded to a strip of toilet paper was painful.
It’s even more troubling that members of NABJ leadership would choose to invite someone with his history while expecting him not to revert to the vile behaviors he has demonstrated and endorsed in his public life.
Know that the fruitful experiences that the convention provides every year to current and aspiring journalists to network, realize professional development, and have a good time will go overlooked because of an Un-presidential candidate who, by his very actions, is uncaring, unsympathetic, unrepentant, hateful and just cruel.
It’s in his nature.
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