By Damenica Ellis
Former President Donald Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday created a heated debate on social media, but Trump is part of a long line of presidents and presidential candidates who have accepted invitations to speak to NABJ.
NABJ President Ken Lemon defended Trump’s question-and-answer session, noting that NABJ has a tradition of inviting major presidential candidates to address the annual conventions. The NABJ communications office provided invitations to presidential candidates as far back as 1976, when its first conference was held in Houston.
Bob Butler, who served as NABJ president from 2013 to 2015, noted that Trump turned down an invitation in 2016 to appear before a joint convention hosted by NABJ and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington, D.C., when he was running against Sen. Hillary Clinton. Clinton accepted the invitation and was a keynote speaker at that convention.
Trump is the first Republican candidate to accept NABJ’s invitation to address a convention in 20 years, Butler said. President George W. Bush visited the UNITY Convention in Washington, D.C., in 2004, as did Sen. John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent that year. Bush also visited the UNITY Convention in 1999 but did not speak.
UNITY was a two-decade effort of four associations of journalists of color to work and meet together: NABJ, NAHJ, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association, now called the Indigenous Journalists Association.
In 2007, NABJ invited then-candidates Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, and Sen. John McCain to address the convention in Las Vegas. Obama and Clinton came on separate days. McCain declined the invitation. Obama, by then the presumptive Democratic nominee, returned to join an NABJ convention in Chicago at UNITY in 2008. McCain again declined the invitation.
In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney did not appear at NABJ in New Orleans. Obama, then running for re-election, didn’t either, but did send Vice President Joe Biden to speak.
Butler said the dramatic change in the presidential race last month might have prompted Trump to accept the invitation. President Joe Biden dropped out of the race two weeks ago, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Harris quickly gained enough support among Democratic National Convention delegates to win the nomination.
Harris, Butler said, “has generated a great amount of enthusiasm to the point where — I’m speculating — but maybe [Trump] felt like this would be a good opportunity for him in his campaign to try to go back to the White House.”
Listen to NABJ Monitor Podcast: Donald Trump at NABJ
Be the first to comment