Donald Trump departs after speaking during a campaign rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, on July 27, 2024. | Source: ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Getty
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to participate Wednesday in a discussion at the National Asociation of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention amid growing outrage among the organization’s members about the event.
The in-person conversation in Chicago that will be moderated by three Black women journalists is scheduled to begin at 12 p.m. CST, or 1 p.m. EST.
MORE: NABJ Leaders Defend Inviting Trump To Black Journalists Convention Amid Growing Outrage
Keep reading to find livestream options to watch Trump’s NABJ conversation online.
NABJ announced the Trump event late Monday night and instantly went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Later, it was reported that NABJ refused to accommodate a request by Vice President Kamala Harris to have the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee appear virtually for a similarly styled conversation.
NABJ members immediately spoke out in opposition, while a small percentage defended the decision to platform a candidate with an earned reputation for being dishonest whose vitriol toward African Americans — particularly Black women journalists — and other people of color has been extensively documented.
.@NABJ President @kenlemonnabj’s response to Presidential candidate @realDonaldTrump accepting NABJ’s invitation: pic.twitter.com/MinCqC7KyW
— NABJ Monitor (@NABJMonitor) July 30, 2024
On Wednesday morning, NABJ President Ken Lemon — who inexplicably predicted that Trump, a proven and habitual unabashed liar, “will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know” — tried to do damage control in a statement explaining what happened with VP Harris and why the organization is resolute with going forward with the Trump event.
Lemon said NABJ remains in communication with the Harris Campaign exploring “virtual options in the future and are still working to reach an agreement.”
Lemon added: “I consulted with a group of our Founders and past NABJ Presidents Tuesday on-site in Chicago, and as a group, we affirmed that the invitation to former President Trump was in line with NABJ’s usual practices since 1976. It has always been our policy to ensure that candidates know that an invitation is not an endorsement. We also agreed that while this race is much different — and contentious — so are the consequences.”
Lemon also addressed concern about Trump’s propensity for lying and said NABJ has partnered with the PolitiFact website “for live fact-checking” during the conversation.
That explanation from Lemon may have come too late as many NABJ members have already sounded off about Trump’s appearance. That includes influential members like the Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who announced on Tuesday that not only was she stepping down as co-chair of the convention in Chicago but also that she — again, the convention’s co-chair — “was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”
While my decision was influenced by a variety of factors, I was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) July 30, 2024
April Ryan, the White House Correspondent for the Grio who was also NABJ’s Journalist of the Year in 2017, reminded her hundreds of thousands of followers on X, formerly Twitter, how Trump has treated Black women journalists, in particular.
“To have a presumed orchestrated session with the former president is an affront to what this organization stands for and a slap in the face to the Black women journalists (NABJ journalists of the year) who had to protect themselves from the wrath of this Republican presidential nominee who is promoting an authoritarian agenda that plans to destroy this nation and her democracy with his Project 2025,” Ryan wrote. “I object to this NABJ session with Donald Trump in Chicago.”
Roland Martin, also a former winner of NABJ’s coveted Journalist of the Year Award, called out the organization for not choosing a Black male journalist to help moderate the event; what with the myriad reports suggesting Trump has made notable inroads with Black male voters.
It also can’t be ignored that NABJ decided against any Black-owned and operated media being among the moderators.
An email from NewsOne seeking comment from NABJ has not been returned.
Tia Mitchell, the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the chair of NABJ’s Political Task Force, said she “helped make this call” of inviting Trump and defended the decision as being “in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades.”
But Jemele Hill, NABJ’s 2018 Journalist of the Year, suggested that Trump’s appearance in Chicago could invite a reaction similar to when NABJ hosted then-Trump aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman at its convention in New Orleans in 2017.
That was when several activists and journalists turned their backs on Manigault-Newman as she spoke during a panel discussion moderated by journalist Ed Gordon. The panel ended when Manigault-Newman walked off the stage as then-NABJ President Sarah Glover explained why she was invited to speak.
Omarosa refuses to be held accountable for her participation in the Trump Administration's destruction of the Black community. #NABJ17 pic.twitter.com/zry5Np6Nm9
— Renee Bracey Sherman (@RBraceySherman) August 11, 2017
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign has already seized on the opportunity of the optics of him being surrounded by Black journalists by boasting about the NABJ invitation in a late-night email on Monday that was — surprise! — replete with lies.
But as Trump has repeatedly demonstrated, facts don’t matter when it comes to his rhetoric, which is in direct conflict with the foundation of journalism and its mission to report the truth.
It was in the above context that Donald Trump was scheduled to participate in a conversation with Black women journalists — ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Semafor politics reporter Kadia Goba and, controversially, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner — at NABJ’s annual convention in Chicago on Wednesday afternoon.
To watch a livestream of the conversation, which is scheduled to last about an hour, go to NABJ’s YouTube page, which can be accessed by clicking here; NABJ’s Facebook page, which can be accessed by clicking here, or any of the videos embedded below.
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Donald Trump’s Racist Attacks Against Kamala Harris
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