By Illinois Review
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump joined the National Association of Black Journalists during their annual convention in Chicago for a moderated discussion about the “the most pressing issues facing the Black community,” just days after Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told the 4,000 member organization that she was too busy to make an appearance at the 5-day convention and career fair.
The discussion, moderated by ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner and Semafor political reporter Kadia Goba, presented Trump with an opportunity to speak directly to the Black community, but right out of the gate, Scott attacked the former president with the first question, prompting the Republican nominee to respond with,
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they are a fake news network, a terrible network.”
The hostility on stage coming from Scott and Goba towards the popular former president who leads in polls against Vice President Harris, was a disservice to the attendees and the community at large who wanted to hear from Trump about his plans to improve a community plagued by violent crime, a migrant crisis and poverty.
Beginning with the first question, it was clear that Faulkner’s fellow moderators wanted to use the opportunity with Trump to showcase their political biases, instead of engaging in a productive conversation about important policy issues – proving to the rest of the country once again, why the mainstream media can’t be trusted.
The highly anticipated panel discussion was expected to focus on key policy issues, but the biased moderators chose to attack Trump and deny voters an opportunity to hear directly from him about crises that are destroying lives and livelihoods in urban communities throughout the country.
“I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” Trump told a crowd of about 1,500 people. And he has the receipts to back that up. During Trump’s presidency, his economic policies led to the lowest unemployment rate in the Black community in history. In August of 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate for Black workers dropped to 5.5 percent, and the unemployment rate for Black women dropped to 4.4 percent – marking historic lows.
In 2019, the U.S. Congress – at President Trump’s urging, passed the First Step Act, which he signed – that made sweeping changes to the broken and racist criminal justice system put in place by Democrats in the 1990s and reversed, among other things, excessive sentencing policies for non-violent first-time offenders – many of them Black men and women who were serving unfair and inhumanely long prison sentences as non-violent offenders.
Then U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, authored the bill that accelerated mass incarceration for Black Americans known as the 1994 Crime bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law. And it’s what author Michelle Alexander referred to as “The New Jim Crow” in America. And the First Step Act, which President Trump championed and signed into law, helped reverse the policies put forth and passed by an overwhelming majority of Democratic politicians in the mid 1990s.
After President Trump signed the historic criminal justice reform legislation, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two Democrat in the Senate, gave a media interview and apologized for his support of the 1994 crime bill, calling it “the worst vote I ever gave.”
Over the July 4th holiday weekend in Chicago, where the conference was held, gang violence terrorized residents in the Democratic-controlled city as 100 people were shot, 17 fatally – turning scenes of celebrations into scenes of chaos, death and carnage.
Last year, over 225,000 high priority 911 calls went unanswered because of a police officer shortage – leaving residents and visitors in grave danger. It’s been reported by several local news outlets and law enforcement experts that Chicago is short nearly 2,000 police officers, creating a nightmare scenario for officials who are trying to convince the country that Chicago is safe enough to host the country’s top Democratic leaders including the ailing and aging president of the United States.
And it’s been reported that Chicago – a sanctuary city – has seen an 11,000 percent increase in arrests of Venezuelan migrants since President Joe Biden opened up our southern border. It’s estimated that over 20,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago in the last year, costing more than $400 million – with 25 buses arriving each day dropping off an average of 1,250 migrants around the city and various surrounding communities.
And while many had hoped to hear more about Trump’s plans to curb violence, close our southern border and improve economic conditions – Thursday’s moderators wanted to score political points and attack the former president instead of talking about issues that matter most to voters in November – especially residents in the Black community.
Immediately after the event, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social that read, “The questions were RUDE and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!”
