Donald Trump isn’t known for backing down — and his two-fisted handling of a hostile interviewer Wednesday was no different.
Making an appearance in Chicago at a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump was greeted with an openly antagonistic question from ABC’s Rachel Scott, who sounded more like a prosecutor than an interviewer building up to the question, “Why should black voters trust you?”
Trump answered the question — but delivered a whole lot more, too.
In a post on the social media platform X, Greg Price, the spokesman for the conservative group the State Freedom Caucus Network, called the response “masterful.” When the context of just Scott’s questions is known — what a set-up smear it actually was — even Price’s word might not be enough.
Check out the video here. Trump’s answer starts about the 30-second mark:
ABC’s Rachel Scott opens her interview with President Trump at the NABJ conference by calling him a racist for criticizing black politicians and journalists.
Trump gives a masterful response while also mentioning how he showed up while Kamala Harris did not. pic.twitter.com/AeMGH0D87I
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 31, 2024
“First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said.
“You don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network …”
Trump then answered the question by citing his first term, when unemployment among black Americans hit historic lows, “opportunity zones” were implemented to revitalize inner cities, and vital funding was found for historically black colleges and universities.
Will Trump win in November?
Those are undeniable parts of his record that will never get attention in the establishment media (and will likely never be appreciated by the heads of black groups like the HBCUs), but they’re the kind of accomplishments that have an impact.
But Trump wasn’t done taking apart Scott’s venomous approach.
“I think it’s a very rude introduction,” he said. “I don’t know exactly why you would do something like that.”
To be more fair than Scott deserves, her points weren’t entirely without foundation, but they were so blatantly skewed, it amounted to a smear — an attempted character assassination as purposeful and premeditated as the attempt on Trump’s life July 13.
The “congresswoman of color” segment was an apparent reference to a 2019 Trump post on the platform then known as Twitter, when, as Politico reported at the time, he took on the progressive leftists of the “squad,” political opponents of Trump in the House of Representatives who’d literally made their careers and won their offices demonizing him.
The “black district attorneys” Trump described were Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, DA Fani Willis — both of whom abused their authority to bring criminal cases against the 45th president that would never have even been considered against anyone not named Donald Trump.
(Scott’s reference to Trump allegedly calling Bragg an “animal” was an obviously willful obfuscation of the facts. In an all-caps Truth Social post in March 2023, Trump referred to Bragg as a “Soros backed animal,” which, while clearly not complimentary, is not exactly calling the DA an ox in the field.)
And in regard to the “black journalists” Trump called “stupid and racist,” according to Scott, they were Abby Phillip of CNN, April Ryan now with The Grio, and Yamiche Alcindor of PBS, three “journalists” so radically leftists they stand out even in a field riddled with bias.
In short, in each case Scott cited, Trump was taking on political opponents who happen to be non-white. It wasn’t their skin color he was assailing, it was their politics, their misuse of political office, and blatant violations of professional integrity.
As to the accusation that he’d dined with a “white supremacist” at Mar-a-Lago, there’s more to that, too. The politically radioactive — and morally indefensible — Nick Fuentes did dine at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, but as part of a dinner that was intended as an effort to help Kanye West, the mentally troubled mega-entertainer (who also happens to be black).
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at the time that he “knew nothing about” the other attendees at the dinner.
The real point here is that Trump knew all of that when Scott ran through her indictment — he knew the back stories of what Scott was talking about, he knew the truth, and he knew the smear she was staging. And he wasn’t going to let it happen.
What Scott was practicing here wasn’t journalism, it was polemics, and, frankly, the answer Trump gave — as bellicose as it was — was more courteous than it merited.
Of course, the mainstream media accounts won’t present the interaction like that.
Politico’s headline “Hostile Trump takes the stage at Black journalists’ conference” or the one at CBS, “Trump spars with reporters at Black journalists’ conference over Kamala Harris’ ethnicity, immigration and jobs,” were typical takes, putting the blame on Trump for the hostile atmosphere. But that can’t surprise anyone with open eyes.
What matters is that Trump went into an arena he knew would be difficult, that he took the first question out of the box and called it out for what it was, and that he set the tone for the rest of the engagement. And he didn’t back down.
It was a performance seen by an audience far larger than the National Association of Black Journalists.
The real question isn’t why black voters should trust Donald Trump. It’s why any American voter should trust anyone in the establishment media.
The answer to that is obvious — and Trump knows it better than anyone.
