Welcome to the race Wednesday night.
I'm Chan Seals in Washington.
Donald Trump has been courting the black vote with vigor.
Today, he was courting controversy.
The Republican nominee spoke at the National Association of Black
Journalists in ABJ convention in Chicago.
Started off late, which he brought up,
and it started off rocky.
Then what followed was a series of tense,
combative moments. The Q&A was moderated by three journalists,
AB CS Rachel Scott, Sima 4's Nadia Goba and Fox's
Harris Faulkner.
And during the roughly 40 minutes sit down,
Trump argued migrants are taking black jobs.
He asserted he is the best president for black Americans
since Abraham Lincoln,
and he also questioned Kamala Harris's ethnicity.
National correspondent Katia Tubman was at that event today and
joins us live now from Chicago.
Katia, there were moments today
where I, like, you know,
held my breath watching it on my phone.
You were actually in the room.
What was it like in there?
Hey, Chance, I got to tell you as someone who
was sitting four rows back from the stage in the
center of the room,
I can tell you no one was holding their breath
in the room.
And that's probably because most people were trying to hold
in their comments,
their reactions, their outbursts, because at the start of the
conversation,
even even before former President Trump took the stage,
the the the audience was told to behave in a
professional manner to remember that this is still to be
run like a newsroom.
So already teeing up the audience to respond in a
certain way to the former president before he took the
stage,
that when he was on the stage,
it seemed like all of those rules and all of
those heads up had gone out the window.
That's likely because as I was taking in notes from
the folks around me and their reactions as the former
president was being questioned by the moderators,
many of them were saying that they were expecting the
former president to be very much pressed to be fact
checked in person,
to not be able to basically spew any falsehoods or
false statements
that that could run rampant on the stage with these
three journalists.
And when at moments the president said any type of
comment that the audience did not find fact based or
truth,
you heard outbursts that say that said
talk about the facts or just answer the question.
These were certain phrases that were used by the audience.
So I got to tell you,
no one was holding their breath.
It also reminded me his his back and forth with
Rachel Scott kind of reminded me of Katy Tur back
in 2016.
Like he kind of wanted to go at it with
her and she just kept repeating her her question.
So Rachel Scott of ABC,
she did try a few times,
Katya, to pin down Trump on whether he truly believes
Kamala Harris is a quote DEI hire.
And this was part of the conversation.
I've known her a long time indirectly,
not directly very much. And
she was always of Indian heritage and she was only
promoting Indian heritage.
I didn't know she was black
until a number of years ago when she happened to
turn black.
And now she wants to be known as black.
So I don't know, is she Indian or is she
black?
She is always, I respect either
one. I respect either one.
But she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the
way.
And then all of a sudden she made a turn
and she went,
she became a black person.
He became a black person,
he said. So Trump is actively courting the black vote.
How'd that seem to go over?
Not well. This was one of the moments in the
the audience or in the time that
the former president spoke where we actually heard the audience
have one of the loudest outbursts.
I think the the loudest being that
that the former president would say that the vice president
had turned black out of nowhere and formerly had not
identified as black.
This seemed to hit a chord with the audience,
very much an audience, but filled with black journalists,
of course, but not just black journalists.
We saw that there were folks from
from, from Democratic parties, from Republican parties,
Trump supporters, Biden, Biden and Harris support supporters all in
the room.
But distinctly that moment when Trump made that comment,
that's when we heard the most reaction.
Now, if the former president is indeed and as we
know,
trying to woo black voters who are a very key
demographic for the Democratic Party,
this may not be the right way to go about
it.
After the the comment was made there,
there was a lot of shudder in the room.
You can feel the reactions and it and it was
at that point we saw a turn in the reactions
from the folks in the room who had a sense
of where this conversation was going.
They didn't think that this was going to be a
very much fat based conversation.
And, and as you said,
Rachel Scott tried to press the former president on,
on other questions on, on trying to get him to
answer specific questions.
And other moderators tried to do the same,
saying, saying at times, I just want to talk about
the specific topic or move on to another conversation.
But at very many, at many times we heard the
president stick to what,
what his agenda was. And,
and that remains to be seen.
But right now we know that kind of looks like
him making sure that folks know that he showed up
and he was the one to who's going to talk
to black journalists.
Whatever he said was not the major point of the
conversation,
but rather the fact that he showed up.
I see that he was there in person,
which he brought up several times.
He did bring up several times.
They were 35 minutes late and kept saying they had
lousy equipment.
But he kept saying, you know,
I'm here, I'm talking to you and I and I
want black votes in America.
I should also note that
Trump did not apologize for JD Vance's cat lady comments.
He said, you know, he kind of speaks for himself,
but that he's just very pro family.
But all that, you know,
said and done at this point,
there was a lot of internal turmoil at any BJ
about whether they should even have Trump there.
A lot of people were upset that he was there.
Other people said, you know,
listen, this is a leading candidate.
We need to hear from him.
We actually did get some solid information that we haven't
heard before from him about his thoughts on J6 or,
you know, his thoughts on Kamala Harris's identity.
How are the members feeling now?
Anything the, the energy at the end of the room,
at the end of the conversation in the room was
very much mixed.
I heard certain, certain members of NABJ say,
well, that was not, that was a slap in the
face.
Others said that that was a complete waste of time.
And then others said that we heard him say things
he that he hadn't said before.
And they were quickly either tweeting those out or writing
those things up to report out.
And so it was very much mixed.
We did hear going into the convention that there was
very much
conflicted and much of A debate amongst members about why
and how the president,
the former president, should show up at this space.
We heard of a certain award-winning journalist who have been
awarded and platformed by NABJ say that this was a
slap in the face,
that this was a poor decision.
And then at other times,
we heard folks say that this is exactly what a
group like the
NABJ Association should be doing,
that they should be making sure that they hear from
all perspectives and all candidates tradition that they have kept
up for a very long time.
So the feeling in the at the end of the
day and and specifically at the end of that that
conversation was,
was that most folks are are stay where they were
or how they felt about the president when it came
to black voters and his opinions and comments around
the Black Americans.
I see. Yeah. In the meantime,
the American voters got a little more insight into his
thinking on a few really important matters.
All right, Katie and Tubman
live in in Chicago. This is our first time doing
a live shot together.
What a day to do it.
Thank you, Katie. I'm glad you're there.