Lifestyle
Five takeaways by a longtime NABJ member from Trump’s appearance before Black journalists
Former President Donald Trump walks off stage after speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
Chicago, Ill. — At first, it felt like watching a slow-motion car crash.
I wasn’t actually in the room when Donald Trump brought his toxic rhetoric to the National Association of Black Journalists national convention Wednesday. But I was nearly there, sitting in a taxicab headed from the airport to the conference at the Hilton Chicago downtown, watching a livestream video as the former president insulted a roomful of Black journalists after ABC’s Rachel Scott opened with a tough question.
Scott asked about several instances where Trump said racist things, from falsely insisting Barack Obama wasn’t born in America to calling Black journalists losers and racist. Trump’s response was a torrent of barely-connected ideas, including a complaint that NABJ brought him to Chicago under “false pretenses” because they didn’t work out details to get Vice President Kamala Harris to make a similar, in-person appearance at the convention.
“I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said, drawing scoffs from the crowd. “That is my answer.”
In a flash, it felt like all the predictions critics made of inviting Trump to address Black journalists came true. He was offering his usual torrent of accusations, assertions and insults – some outrageous, most inflated – creating word salad that moderators struggled to fact-check in the moment, raising fears that he owned the organization at its own conference.
As a 34-year member of NABJ, I had my own qualms. Not about inviting Trump – the group has invited the major party candidates for president to its national conferences for many years, to platform questions on issues involving people of color. But, among other things, I objected to seeing an anchor from the right-leaning cable channel Fox News among the three people questioning Trump. (Though I have volunteered for decades as chair of the NABJ’s Media Monitoring Committee, I had nothing to do with organizing Trump’s appearance).
And I worried about the optics of a Black journalists’ group offering a prime panel spot to a politician who had attacked Black journalists, while the Black and Asian woman also running for president would not appear.
But, after some reflection and talking with other members at the conference, I think the actual impact of Trump’s appearance is more nuanced. Here’s my five takeaways from what happened.
Trump’s appearance pushed NABJ to face tension between its status as a journalism organization and an advocate for fair treatment of Black journalists and, by extension, Black people.
This is an idea I heard from a friend and fellow journalist/NABJ member, and it rings true. As journalists, we jump at the chance to ask direct questions of a former president who has often stoked racial fears, from birtherism attacks against Obama and Harris to false claims about undocumented immigrants.
But our website also notes that NABJ “advocates on behalf of Black journalists and media professionals,” honoring those who provide “balanced coverage of the Black community and society at large.” I’ve always felt that if the media industry can give Black journalists a fair shot, we can help provide more accurate, less prejudiced coverage of everything – particularly issues involving marginalized groups.
That’s why some NABJ members chafed at platforming Trump, with his long history of racist statements, at a conference aimed at reducing the prejudice Black journalists face every day. But I think part of reaching NABJ’s goals involves Black journalists learning how to confront racist ideas; trying to get Trump to explain himself in front of a group of Black media professionals seems pretty in line with that mission.
NABJ president Ken Lemon asserted during the conference’s opening ceremonies later that day that the group is, at its core, a journalism organization. On this day, at least, it’s obvious the journalism side took precedence.
Former President Donald Trump shakes hands with ABC’s Rachel Scott, one of the journalists who moderated the event at NABJ in Chicago on Wednesday.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
If the goal was to get Trump to reveal his terrible takes on race to the world – mission accomplished.
Lots of media outlets focused on his awful comments on how Harris “suddenly” became Black in his eyes. Trump tried the classic maneuver of turning an opponent’s advantage against them, acting as if the embrace of Harris as a history-making Black and Asian woman in politics was the result of some cynical marketing spin.
“I did not know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” he said. “And now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian, or is she Black?”
True enough, the questioners struggled to pin Trump down on exactly why he talks about race the way he does. Or how he can believe such ideas aren’t racist.
Still, what Trump did say mostly made him look old-fashioned and prejudiced. Will it appeal to his base? Perhaps – but the moment didn’t feel like a strong, confident leader puncturing racial hypocrisy.
It seemed more like the wandering statements of someone who just doesn’t understand America’s modern melting pot of ethnicities.
Sometimes, with Trump, there is value in having an interviewer on hand who he trusts.
Much as I disliked seeing an anchor from a news organization that has won the NABJ’s Thumbs Down Award twice on the panel, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner did get Trump to open up a bit with less-pointed but telling questions.
In particular, when Trump said he thought the vice presidential candidates had “virtually no impact” on election results, he seemed to put into perspective his relationship with JD Vance while belittling the guy he is supposed to spend months alongside in a tight campaign.
There are other journalists from less partisan news outlets who likely could have achieved the same moment. But there is value in having one journalist in the mix who doesn’t immediately raise Trump’s defenses and might provoke more telling responses.
Former President Donald Trump appears on a panel at NABJ on Wednesday in Chicago. From left, ABC’s Rachel Scott, Semafor’s Kadia Goba and FOX News’ Harris Faulkner moderated the event.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
Trump is a chaos agent who divides people and divides NABJ
In the end, I was less concerned about how NABJ looked to the world in the wake of Trump’s visit than how it deals with itself.
As news of the panel spread, many journalists spoke out passionately against having him at the conference, reasoning that any appearance would likely benefit him more than the group, platforming his terrible rhetoric about racial issues. Well-known figures like Roland Martin and April Ryan – who Trump criticized when he was president – spoke out; Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah quit her post as convention co-chair amid the controversy.
There are also tough questions about why the group couldn’t work out an arrangement to have Harris appear at the convention virtually, given that she was flying to Houston for the funeral of friend and sorority sister Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Considering the intense emotions at hand over the coming election and widespread skepticism about coverage decisions by journalists, there’s lots of criticism and bruising assumptions about what happened here.
This is the kind of division that can hobble NABJ in the future as people cancel memberships, decline to volunteer, hold back donations and continue to criticize the group’s direction. I expect the group’s membership meeting, scheduled for Saturday morning, will draw lots of pointed feedback from those who still question the wisdom of welcoming the former president here.
As someone who can attribute almost every major job I’ve gotten to connections made at an NABJ convention, this heightened squabbling is what I fear most – a distraction at a time when job losses and cutbacks in media have made times even more challenging for journalists of color.
In a way, NABJ played Trump’s game – and may have had some success
Another friend noted that Trump – who commands loyalty from GOP voters — has always valued dominating the news cycle, regardless of whether the stories are complimentary. His NABJ appearance ensured everything from the network evening news programs to The Daily Show focused on his comments here rather than Harris’ increasingly energized campaign.
As I saw criticism build over Trump’s visit, I wondered if NABJ wasn’t like a scrappy dog who finally caught a passing car – after years of GOP candidates declining invitations, finally one of the most divisive Republicans in modern politics was accepted. And the consequences of hosting him – particularly when Harris would not appear at the convention – loomed large.
But in the end, NABJ also landed at the top of the news cycle at a time when – as announced by the group during its opening ceremony – the convention drew the largest number of attendees in its history, over 4,000.
Yes, many supporters felt, as I did initially, that the appearance was a train wreck. But NABJ also showed the world three Black female journalists questioning Trump on some of his most provocative statements on race, with telling answers.
In a world where any publicity can be good publicity, that just might be enough.
A true smorgasbord of options is on offer for readers this week, with flavors to suit a variety of palates.
Care for an inspirational memoir? Check. Reminders of mortality and the precarious position of civilization itself? Yep, that’s here. And if you want a head start on summer, there are a couple of books publishing this week that may fit that bill too. You’ll just have to decide first if your preferred page-turner features people falling in love — or dying in inventively grisly ways.
A difficult decision, to be sure. But don’t worry, the stakes are low: You really can’t go wrong with any of this week’s notable books.
Atavists, by Lydia Millet
“Is there a writer more profound and less pretentious than Lydia Millet?” That question leads NPR’s review of the author’s previous short story collection, Fight No More, and bears asking again now. After a spell that saw her publish a couple of novels and a work of nonfiction, the former Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist has returned to short fiction with her latest, a collection of 14 interconnected stories set in a Los Angeles that is teetering on the cusp of climate catastrophe. Careful though: As always with Millet, the writing here is spare, straightforward and often funny — but beware of its dark and perilous depths.
Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs, by José Andrés with Richard Wolffe
How should you introduce Andrés — with his work in the kitchen, which has earned him Michelin stars and TV appearances, or his humanitarian work in war zones and disaster areas? In this memoir, the Spanish-American chef connects the dots of his dovetailing passions. Expect plenty of recipes — both the metaphorical, life-lesson variety and the kind that you can actually follow to make dinner tonight. In a confusing, often painful world, “at least feeding people is what makes sense,” as Andrés told NPR in 2022.
Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry
Henry is on quite a run. For the better part of a decade now, the prolific young novelist has published a book each year that feels sunkissed by the promise of the coming summer. Heck, one of them was even named Beach Read. This year is no different. In Great Big Beautiful Life, the star-crossed leads in question are a pair of journalists who both have designs on an exclusive interview with an aging heiress, whose life story is an important thread woven throughout the novel. Let the competition — and inconvenient sexual tension — commence!
Notes to John, by Joan Didion
The notes collected here comprise the late writer’s private reflections after her sessions with a psychiatrist beginning in 1999, during a tumultuous time in her life. The “John” addressed in the title is her husband, John Gregory Dunne, but the journal really focuses on a broad swath of topics — from her own childhood and career anxieties to her complicated relationship with her adoptive daughter, whose death just a handful of years later would inspire Didion’s 2011 memoir Blue Nights. It’s unclear whether Didion — whose body of work features plenty of intimately personal writing — intended to publish these particular notes, which were found neatly arranged among her files after her death in 2021.
When the Wolf Comes Home, by Nat Cassidy
There will be blood. That much, at least, you can count on in Cassidy’s fourth novel, a relentlessly paced slice of horror. Jess, an actress down on her luck and reeling from a particularly terrible night, finds a young boy hiding in the bushes — and quickly realizes the night is about to get much, much worse. That boy is hiding for a very good reason, you see. Don’t go into this one expecting a slow burn. Cassidy himself commented on the book’s Goodreads page that this is his “homage to ’80s action horror paperbacks, the kind you might pick up in an airport or a grocery store.”
As the saying goes: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” And what better way to maintain stamina and mental equilibrium during tense times than a dose of wit? Two women writers — one a long-deceased legend; the other a debut novelist — give readers reason to keep calm and smile on.
In my house, every time the mail brings a dread notice from, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles, one of us humans is bound to mutter, “What Fresh Hell Is This?” If, for nothing else but that line, Dorothy Parker is a demigod. But, of course there’s plenty else.
In her poems, short stories and surgical knife-sharp reviews for magazines like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Parker brought into being one of the signature voices of the 1920s: wry, risqué and hardboiled, swaddled in a cocoon coat of humor.
It’s been said, rightly, I think, that Parker’s wit can’t be fully appreciated by reading her; you had to have been at one of those boozy Algonquin Round Table lunches to marvel at how quickly she whipped out one-liners. But, perhaps the closest we can come is reading her poetry, which like so many works of the 1920s is short.
The Everyman’s Library has just brought out a pocket edition of her work, called Poems, which is culled from Parker’s bestselling collections Enough Rope and Sunset Gun. A lot of her poems are rueful odes to how tough it was for a smart, celebrated literary woman to find love. So how fun to discover other, lesser known poems that are sassier. Here’s one called “Fighting Words” that veers away from female martyrdom:
Say my love is easy had,
Say I’m bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad, —
Still behold me at your side.
Say I’m neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue, —
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
If Parker’s voice embodies the wise-cracking ethos of the 1920s, the humor of British-born novelist Camilla Barnes is more in the droll, psychologically astute tradition of a Barbara Pym novel. Barnes’ debut is called The Usual Desire to Kill. It’s what two sisters here, Charlotte and Miranda, acknowledge that that’s what they feel whenever they visit their eccentric, exhausting, retired parents at their tumbledown farmhouse in rural France.
Mum, a homemaker, is described by Miranda as looking like: “a piece of low-slung Victorian furniture.” Dad, a former philosophy professor, lives in his head. Here’s Miranda talking about her father’s way of relating to the ducks, cats, chickens and llamas who live on the farm:
They were not pets, … He didn’t interfere in their lives, in the same way he didn’t interfere in his daughters’ lives. He was just not very good at being interested in other living creatures, particularly if they only had two legs. The more legs the better, he would say. He would be happier living with a spider than with Mum, if the spider could cook. A millipede would be paradise.
The pair met in Oxford in the early ’60s and married after their first real date resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. For more than 50 years, they’ve been nattering at each other, sunk deep into a marriage that Miranda describes as “a game of stubbornness versus pedantry.”
The constant pleasure of reading The Usual Desire to Kill is Barnes’ unexpected language. A bed with a hard mattress is likened to “sleeping on old toast”; dried eggs, which the father recalls eating during World War II, are said to have tasted “a bit like dandruff.” But, as the story of their parents’ lives comes to the fore through old letters and other narrative devices, it’s evident that, much as Charlotte and Miranda have always felt unseen by their odd parents, they, in turn, don’t really know those parents — not in full. None of us do, given that we mostly only hear selective stories of our parents’ early lives.
The sharpest humor is always grounded in some pain: Parker and Barnes both affirm that familiar truth. Reading these very different, very funny books boosted my spirits and lowered my tight shoulders.
Georgia Quarterback Jaden Rashada No Longer Visiting North Carolina
Doug Leier: The paddlefish is one of North Dakota’s most unique fish species
Ohio State Buckeyes Star Made Major Impression During NFL Draft Interviews
Former Death Row inmate Glossip moved to Oklahoma County Jail
Oregon is getting hotter. This state program is helping thousands of renters stay cool
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
Trump Energy chief recounts evolution of US environs over 55 'Earth Days': ‘A handily energized society works'
New Zealand’s minor gov’t party pushes to define women by biological sex
Walgreens to pay up to $350 million in U.S. opioid settlement
Pope Francis and US presidents: A look back at his legacy with the nation's leaders
The reacion of the Pope's 'neighbours' to the news of his death
-
Culture5 days agoAs likely No. 1 WNBA Draft pick, Paige Bueckers is among new generation of young talent
-
News1 week agoWhat to Know About the Deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
-
Culture7 days ago2025 NFL Draft matchmaker: Best fits for Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart, other top QBs
-
Culture1 week agoFrom LeBron James to Alex Ovechkin, untouchable sports records and why they might never be broken
-
Culture1 week agoMasters fashion: Stretching the concept of quiet luxury underneath a giant oak tree
-
Technology1 week agoScience Saru’s The Ghost in the Shell series gets a new teaser trailer
-
News1 week agoRead the Report on President Trump’s Annual Physical Exam
-
News1 week agoIdaho Court Expands Abortion Ban Medical Exceptions