Incredulous laughter, audible gasps: Trump’s performance at Black journalists’ panel left him exposed

After keeping an audience of interrogators waiting, Donald Trump finally arrived on stage for his Wednesday appearance at the convention for the National Association of Black Journalists over an hour late. He blamed the delay not on the furious behind-the-scenes between the NABJ and his campaign about whether he could be factchecked in real time, but on what he described as organizers’ inability to calibrate the audio equipment in time for his highly controversial panel discussion. “It’s a disgrace,” he snarled.

When ABC’s Rachel Scott opened the proceedings by asking the former president his impetus for addressing the Black journalists, women and Chicagoans in the crowd who have been regularly subject to his hostility, Trump dismissed the question as “horrible” and called Scott “nasty” before turning his bluster meter up to 11.

He declared himself the best president since Abraham Lincoln for “the Black population”. He pushed back on the idea that Kamala Harris would identify as Black. (“She was Indian, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went.”) He enunciated the word with such contempt, as if coughing up a hairball – buh-LAAAAA-kuh. All the while, crowd reactions whipsawed from incredulous laughter to deep groans. At one point the discussion shifted to Sonya Massey, the latest Black person to be unlawfully killed by Chicago police. “Are you talking [the one] with the water?” Trump asked to audible gasps.

Before that, outright anger was the prevailing emotion among many NABJ members who saw the decision to have Trump at the annual conference and career fair as a betrayal of the association’s core values. The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah, who resigned her position as co-chair of the convention’s organizing committee in protest, was among a slew of Black journalists who spoke out about the association’s decision to even invite the presumptive Republican nominee.

NABJ president Ken Lemon defended the decision as part of a tradition of questioning national party leaders – from presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, to nominees Barack Obama and Bob Dole. What’s more, Lemon said, they had invited Harris, but her campaign would only commit to a video interview. Trump, however, was happy to attend in person. How could he pass up an opportunity for face time with “the Blacks”?

Trump hasn’t exactly been subtle in his courtship of Black voters, from casting the former video vixen Amber Rose in a speaking role at the Republican national convention to promoting his rap sheet and assassination as forms of street cred. Lemon and others in NABJ leadership spun the Trump panel as an opportunity to hold his feet to the fire. But it was the attendees who were held up in the end; many panels were delayed and outright canceled to accommodate Trump, prompting more convention desertions.

It’s a wonder more didn’t change plans earlier after waiting for hours to be let into the venue, a giant auditorium at the end of an impressive ballroom. The security check, run by the Secret Service, was more thorough than the usual airport experience – fresh in the minds of some attendees who had rushed in straight from the plane. As more people streamed in, funk music blasted overhead, giving Trump’s appearance more of a concert vibe. More than a few whipped out their camera phones to take snaps with Trump’s empty stage chair in the background. High on a projection screen just behind was a graphic of the NABJ conference logo with the slogan writ large: “Journalism over disinformation”. You can understand why people might be upset. “I don’t know if surreal is the right word,” Brittny McGraw, the news chief at Nasa told me, “but perhaps that is the word I will go with.”

When Trump finally did take the stage, he played the hits – vowing (again) to close the border, cut inflation (how?) and “drill, baby, drill”. Pitted against the three-woman interview team that also included Semafor’s Kadia Goba and Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, he reserved all of his invective for the “rude” Scott – who seemed unhappy at having to go through with this farce and stood firm in the face of increasing attacks.

When she cut Trump off mid-digression in hopes of pivoting to another question before time ran out, Trump snapped: “You’re the one who held me up!” In their back and forth, Trump seemed to have another Black woman in his sights. He might’ve spent more time directing his attacks at Harris if he wasn’t still so fixated on beating up on Joe Biden for being old; never mind that all his complaining about not being able to hear the questions on stage made him look even older in those moments. After about 35 minutes, thankfully, it was over.

In theory, being interrogated by three Black women should have worked against Trump. Doubtless his many supporters will take his performance as confirmation of his fitness for the fight against Harris. But for the many in the room who could see past the bluster, Trump looked for all the world like an old crank who can barely hear or have a thought without somehow making it racist. Asked by Goba how he’d know if he was too old to stay in the job, Trump didn’t hesitate to take another shot at Scott. “Look, if I came on stage and got treated so rudely as this woman,” he said, still smarting from her pointed line of questioning. That was the payoff the NABJ had hoped for, and Trump never looked more exposed.