He attended the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. It started out poorly and did not get better.
During a contentious and chaotic panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday, Donald Trump parroted disinformation about immigration and abortion, questioned Kamala Harris’s race and accused a panel moderator, Rachel Scott – the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News – of being “rude” and presenting a “nasty question” when she asked him: “Why should Black voters trust you?”
Another report said:
In his most watched public appearance since Harris took over for Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump’s coarse, cutting and at times snappish responses, including calling one of Scott’s questions “nasty,” showed him to be very much the same person he has always been despite the assassination attempt earlier this month that he initially claimed had changed his outlook and approach.
…Anthony Scaramucci, the venture capitalist and former Trump ally who served as his White House communications director for 11 days, posted: “Whoever told him to do this interview should be fired.”
Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton, who appeared on CNN moments after Trump walked off the stage in Chicago, was even more blunt: “You need to be careful with this crap,” he warned. “As far as every Black person in America is concerned, she is Black. … To question the vice president’s ethnicity — I can’t even say what I really want to say about this.”
…Harris’ campaign, in a sign of just how damaging they believed Trump’s performance may have been to his own efforts to woo Black voters and independents, blasted out eight different clips from the interview, including Trump’s use of the term “Black jobs” and his inability to defend Vance in response to multiple questions about his past comments maligning “childless cat ladies” and his readiness to lead on day one.
Ronny Chieng of The Daily Show has something to say.
Why does he do this? Does he originally plan on appealing to them and then gets ticked off by something and loses his cool and starts ranting? Or does he attend these things not to win over the audience but to be rude and dismissive to them, especially Black women, because that is who he is and what he thinks pleases his base?
Who knows what goes through his weird and creepy mind?
The real question was a thing of beauty, whoever transcribed the opening question in this way ought to be slapped. And then his leading objection to it was so bratty! “You don’t even say ‘hello, how are you'” -- what a mewling child. I also enjoyed the fact that he walked out to almost total silence from the audience.
Scott: “…You’ve attacked Black journalists, called them a loser, saying that the questions they asked are, quote, ‘stupid and racist’…”
Trump: “First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner…”
This guy just has ZERO ability to self-critique. It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but it’s still impressive how little he has learned, even after all these years. Even I know that the correct response would be: “I’m so glad you asked me that, because I want to clarify…”
Is it possible that he just became *too* racist? The racism line has shifted so far in the last eight years, but I don’t see how even the most racist person can claim this was just “race realism.”
@2 LykeX: His lack of self awareness and self-critique is probably why he was there at all. He has been talking about the amount of support he has been getting from black people and claiming to get a large portion of the black vote. Which didn’t happen, in 2016 he got more then previous Republicans but it was still a fraction of the black vote. He doesn’t realize that the black people at this campaign events are the same ones over and over and the black people who walk up and thank him for being president are staged. He likely thought he was going to a friendly venue and would get the same sort of softball questions that Fox feeds him. He had no idea how to respond when that wasn’t what he got.
Whatever he says and wherever he says it he is speaking only to the MAGA cultists. There are quite a few election officials in swing states ready to hand him the victory notwithstanding the actual vote count. All he has to do is stagger to the finish line.
Of course, I am hoping there is a way to counter their election-stealing plans.
According to TWIV, NTSB has an avian forensics lab for idenfifying bird strike leftovers that are referred to as “snarge” -- you know, you brush the snarge out of the engine so you can identify species, etc.
Turnip’s performance was snarge. Basically no black person who sees that performance will vote for Turnip except for head cases like Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson. I have become hard to shock but it was more offensive than if he had just started putting on his robes and hood; it was jaw-dropping and then it got worse.
There’s been a lot of criticism of the NABJ for inviting Trump -- but if his performance has been as self-harming as the responses quoted suggest, maybe goading him into such blatant racism was the intention.
“Does he originally plan on appealing to them and then gets ticked off by something and loses his cool and starts ranting?”
Yep, I think that was exactly what happened. Trump thinks he is the world’s best dealmaker. That is why his (well, really his ghostwriter’s) first book was called “The Art of the Deal”. He expected to be asked what he could give to Black voters, and he would reply that he would keep “Black jobs” from being given to illegal immigrants, and they would then thank him with “tears in their eyes”. He seems to think that most Black people still work as dishwashers, hotel maids, and field hands, which is why he used the phrase “Black jobs”.
I am given to understand that inviting Presidential candidates in for interviews is one of the things the NABJ just does. Since the Angry Cheeto is a Presidential candidate, he gets an invitation.
What is less clear is why the Cheeto chose to accept. If he is as much of a narcissistic sociopath as his behavior suggests, it’s possible that he may have been sufficiently self-deluded that he genuinely did believe his lies about how Black people love him and yada yada yada. Given the Cheeto’s established track record for hiring sycophants, it’s entirely possible that he didn’t have any advisers who were willing to tell him what a bad idea this particular interview would be.