New York, NY — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently met with a group of about 100 African American pastors at Trump Tower in Manhattan, NYC and says that he has secured endorsements from the group. He, however, did not reveal exactly how many endorsements he secured.
One of the pastors that he met with was Omarosa Manigault (former reality TV star turned church leader). Trump told reporters, “We have many, many endorsements that came out of the meeting.” He continued, “You know it lasted for more than two and a half hours. We came up with lots of good ideas and lots of future ideas. But I thought it was an amazing meeting.”
“I saw love in that room,” he added.
The group reportedly addressed various issues that are of concern to African Americans including the high unemployment rate in the Black community and police brutality.
“Successful,” but highly criticized
The meeting, however, was highly criticized even before it happened. An open letter from Ebony Magazine encouraged Black pastors to take caution. Parts of the letter read:
Mr. Trump routinely uses overtly divisive and racist language on the campaign trail. Most recently, he admitted his supporters were justified for punching and kicking a Black protester who had attended a Trump rally with the intent to remind the crowd that “Black Lives Matter.”
Trump followed this action by tweeting inaccurate statistics about crime prevalence rates in Black communities — insinuating that Black people are more violent than other groups. Those statistics did not reflect the fact that most crimes are intraracial, meaning that most people do harm to people of their own race. They also did not speak to the crime of neoliberalism, capitalism, and white supremacy which kill thousands of black and nonblack people each day.
Trump’s racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric should give those charged with the care of the spirits and souls of Black people great pause.
Changing his tone
Regarding changing his tone, Trump said the pastors with whom he met didn’t really ask him to change his tone. He said, “The tone has taken me to first position in every single poll.”
He even tweeted about it, saying: “Meeting with African American Pastors at Trump Tower was amazing. Wonderful news conference followed. Now off to Georgia for big speech!”
Watch the video below: