Trump Sit-down at Black Journalists’ Convention Sparks Backlash
Donald Trump speaks at the country’s largest annual gathering of Black journalists on Wednesday, an effort to bolster the Republican presidential candidate’s standing that has divided the group’s members.
Trump’s first-ever appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago comes a week after the 2024 election was shaken up by President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out.
The group, founded in 1975, regularly invites presidential candidates to address its annual gathering, but Trump is the first Republican to accept the offer since George W. Bush spoke at a conference they co-hosted in 2004.
Trump is scheduled to be interviewed on Wednesday afternoon at the event by three Black women journalists, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Semafor’s Kadia Goba.
Some members said the group should not offer a platform to Trump, who has denigrated the work of Black journalists, sometimes in personal terms. Trump has also used racist and dehumanizing language on the campaign trail.
Karen Attiah said that she had not been “involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”
In Chicago, a protest was expected outside the venue where Trump was scheduled to speak. Trump has regularly criticized the city’s largely Democratic political leadership for Chicago’s levels of street violence.
The National Association of Black Journalists includes a range of members, from reporters with legacy media outlets that hope to preserve a working relationship with Trump to Black-owned outlets and journalists whose work takes a stridently anti-Trump tone.
Trump made his resentful relationship with many of the media outlets who cover him a focus of his 2016, 2020 and 2024 campaigns and sparred with members of the White House press corps during his 2017-2021 presidency.
