Trump threatened to back out of Black journalists interview over live fact-checking
Donald Trump reportedly didn't want to be live fact-checked during his disastrous visit to the National Association of Black Journalists' annual convention in Chicago, according to the group's president.
NABJ president Ken Lemon confirmed to Axios that Trump initially refused to take the stage if the journalists fact-checked him live. The disastrous Q&A with the former president was ultimately delayed by more than an hour — though that is not unusual for a Trump event — but he did eventually sit for the talk.
Trump blamed the delay on problems with the venue's audio. Lemon confirmed that there had been audio issues, but they were solved quickly, and that Trump's reluctance to be fact-checked was holding up the event.
Lemon told Axios that the "bigger problem was his threat not to take the stage."
“He did not want to be fact-checked, but we could not let him on the stage without fact-checking,” he said.
Lemon said that he was preparing himself to go out to the crowd and explain why Trump wouldn't be appearing when the former president decided to walk out and do the Q&A.
The Trump campaign disputed Lemon's account to Axios, saying Trump had to wait for "close to" 40 minutes for an audio issue to be resolved.
Trump then had a contentious discussion with the panel journalists, and make the especially bizarre comment that Vice President Kamala Harris "turned" Black after previously describing herself as Indian.
“I didn’t know she was Black,” he said on Wednesday. “She happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, 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.”
Harris has both Black and Indian heritages. Her father is from Jamaica and her mother is Indian. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president is both the first African-American and Asian-American vice president.
When ABC News' Rachel Scott asked Trump why he made inflammatory comments about reporters of color and lied about his rivals, he simply complained that the journalists weren't being nice enough to him.
“I don’t think I’ve been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said. “You don’t even say hello, how are you.”
Trump later repeated his claim that he has done "so much for the Black population of this country" and insisted he was the "best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln."
In the wake of Trump's comments about Harris's racial background, #WhenIturnedBlack began trending on X to mock the former president's apparent inability to comprehend the existence of a biracial individual.
Trump's convention appearance was met with concern and condemnation from some commenters online, but Lemon said the organization was acting in accordance with its guidelines when it invited the former president.
“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,” Lemon said. “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.”
“While we acknowledge the concerns expressed by our members, we believe it is important for us to provide our members with the opportunity to hear directly from candidates and hold them accountable,” he added.