Scott said that during Monday’s meeting between Donald Trump and black pastors, issues discussed were high unemployment rates among African-American youth, police shootings of African-Americans, and about getting real results.
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Trump said after Monday’s meeting that he would not change his tone as a candidate, which he said had taken him to “first position” in preference polls. “The man has amassed a fortune on his own and I think he’s smart enough to do a good job to turn our economy around”, said voter Susan Burford.
Taking to Facebook, Bishop Clarence McClendon, a Los Angeles-based minister who was invited to the meeting, made it clear that his presence is in no way an endorsement of Trump.
Trump’s campaign, along with a tweet from Trump himself, then backpedaled on Monday’s meeting, saying it wasn’t a press event to announce an endorsement. “Anybody who knows Donald Trump personally knows that he’s not a racist”, said Steve Parson, a black pastor from Richmond, Virginia. “Probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them up and said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be meeting with Trump because he believes all lives matter, ‘ ” he said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
But there was no wide-ranging endorsement from the group, some of whom had said they were surprised when the gathering was advertised as such by Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.
“Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a single day”, he said of Trump’s gap in the African-American community.
He came under fire on Sunday’s Meet the Press after host Chuck Todd challenged Trump for his claim he saw Muslims in New Jersey celebrating after the 9/11 attacks.
“What it shows is that the work we’ve put in here in New Hampshire, the plans we’ve laid out – that people are taking them seriously and taking them to heart”, Christie said. Nevertheless, Trump has assured his supporters that he will win the black vote.
Henry County’s Dr. Cindy Trimm agreed to go, but she said her meeting is not an endorsement.
Trump has now canceled the press conference but will still meet with the pastors.
Following the meeting Donald Trump had with the black pastors, he was pleased.
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Over 100 religious leaders in the African-American community published a letter on EBONY’s website, pleading with attendees to consider Trump’s “racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric”, they consider divisive. “I see love everywhere I go”, Trump told reporters with characteristic bombast in an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
