The Black Ministers Loving Trump {Speaks Volumes}
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Donald Trump Courts Black Pastors, Claiming ‘Great Love’ in MeetingNOV. 30, 2015
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It seemed like a powerful counterpoint to the perception of Donald Trump as intolerant: A hundred black ministers and religious leaders would endorse him at his offices in Manhattan, vouching for his sensitivity and broad-mindedness.
But within hours of the announcement a few days ago, furious backtracking, denials and finger-pointing were underway.
By Monday afternoon, the supposed declaration of support from a cross-section of African-Americans seemed to crumble as several pastors insisted they had never agreed to attend or back Mr. Trump. In the end, his political debut with black leaders was refashioned into a private meeting with a smaller group that played down talk of endorsements.
A few of those who showed up sounded uncomfortable. “It appears as if he’s a possible racist based upon some of the things he said about black America,” said Brehon Hall, a preacher from Toledo, Ohio, as he headed into the meeting at Trump Tower.
Darrell Scott, left, a minister, with Bruce LeVell, publicly endorsed Donald J. Trump after a meeting with the candidate Monday.
The awkward evolution of the event highlights the perils of a haphazard-seeming campaign that revolves almost entirely around a giant personality.
But it also captures the degree to which Mr. Trump, both the man and the candidate, has polarized African-Americans, a group he is now courting as he tries to shake accusations of bigotry. During the meeting on Monday, black ministers challenged Mr. Trump over his record, and suggested he apologize for his incendiary language, according to those who attended.
In an interview afterward, Mr. Trump described “great love in the room” and a wide-ranging, two-hour discussion of black unemployment, police shootings and deficiencies of urban education. “They liked me, and I liked them,” he said.
With a history of racially divisive remarks dating back decades, Mr. Trump had alienated many black leaders long before his current presidential campaign espoused what some viewed as coded language about “a silent majority” and overt dismissiveness of the swelling Black Lives Matter movement.
By the time African-American ministers like Corletta J. Vaughn of Detroit saw their names listed on a flier as attendees of a meeting that would end with an endorsement of Mr. Trump, a number of them expressed outrage.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ms. Vaughn, the senior pastor at the Holy Spirit Cathedral of Faith in Detroit, said she remembered thinking when she saw the document. “That would kill me. My constituency would murder me. There is no way in the world I can do that.”
Despite the flier’s claim that she would meet with Mr. Trump, Ms. Vaughn said she had declined the invitation. So did Bishop Clarence E. McClendon of Los Angeles, another minister mentioned on the flier.
Darrell Scott, left, a minister, with Bruce LeVell, publicly endorsed Donald J. Trump after a meeting with the candidate Monday. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times
On Monday, the mounting frustration had boiled over. In New York City, a planned meeting on gun violence earlier in the day turned into a public scolding of Mr. Trump and the ministers in Harlem.
Invoking Mr. Trump’s charged language about immigrants (he has previously claimed Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border), the Rev. Al Sharpton wondered why black religious leaders would seek to bask “in the glow of a billionaire” while “offending their congregants and offending their cloth.”
“Let us not forget,” Mr. Sharpton said from the pulpit of his National Action Network, “Jesus was a refugee, and they are meeting with someone who has taken a mean stance against refugees. I don’t know how you preach Jesus, a refugee, on Sunday and then deal with a refugee-basher on Monday without raising the question.”
In a sign of his newly conciliatory tone on racial matters, Mr. Trump, who relishes rhetorical battle and leaves no attack unanswered, offered warm words to Mr. Sharpton on Monday afternoon.
“Deep down inside, Al likes me a lot,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “That I can tell you.”
He gently added, “Al is doing his thing.”
History suggests that each party’s eventual nominee will emerge from 2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by endorsements, fund-raising and polling.
For many African-American ministers, Mr. Trump remains a mystifying and sometimes inflammatory figure. As far back as the 1970s, when Mr. Trump was president of Trump Management, a giant New York City landlord, the company was accused by the Justice Department of using racially discriminatory rental policies. (It settled the case.)
In 1989, in the days after the brutal assault on a jogger in Central Park, Mr. Trump paid for a newspaper advertisement that warned of “roving bands of wild criminals” and called for the return of the death penalty — language denounced by some city leaders as racially provocative.
But he could also show flashes of sensitivity: He donated office space to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, inside a building he owned on Wall Street.
Today, Mr. Trump’s campaign puts little emphasis on black voters and has, at times, defended his supporters even when they have displayed hostility and physical violence toward black protesters. In the latest episode, the crowd at a Trump rally in Alabama turned on a black demonstrator who tried to interrupt the candidate’s speech, in some cases kicking and punching the man, according to videos.
Afterward, Mr. Trump sided with his supporters. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” he said in a television interview. “It was disgusting what he was doing.”
Inside the closed-door meeting with Mr. Trump on Monday, black ministers pointedly mentioned the violent exchange, said George G. Bloomer, senior pastor of Bethel Family Worship Center in Durham, N.C.
“He said he didn’t know if it was a Black Lives Matter or white lives matter protester,” said Mr. Bloomer, who declined to endorse Mr. Trump but said he understood Mr. Trump’s frustration with the protester.
Pressure to endorse Mr. Trump hovered over the meeting, according to attendees, who said that cards pledging support were handed out for them to sign while Mr. Trump was in the room.
Mr. Trump brushed off the brouhaha over the meeting, and said he received “many, many endorsements” from the ministers. But the campaign declined to offer a list of either the ministers who attended or those who had endorsed him. After the meeting, a single religious leader, Darrell Scott, a Cleveland-area minister who helped organize the session, publicly endorsed Mr. Trump in the lobby of the building, overlooking Fifth Avenue.
Mr. Trump’s campaign initially boasted that 100 black ministers would gather with him. But photos provided by his aide on Monday afternoon showed a crowd of about half that size, including Trump staff members. (Among them: Omarosa Manigault, a memorable guest on Mr. Trump’s show, “The Apprentice,” who is now an ordained minister.)
Despite the public expressions of skepticism, Mr. Trump insisted that several of the ministers expressed admiration for him. After the meeting, the Trump campaign said it would connect a reporter to an attendee who could testify to Mr. Trump’s sincerity. At that point, Bruce LeVell of Atlanta got on the phone.
“It was very successful,” Mr. LeVell said of the meeting. “It was like sitting in his living room having a conversation. There was no tension.”
Other than the organizer of the event, Mr. LeVell was the only participant to provide a quote for a news release issued by Mr. Trump after the gathering.
It turns out, however, that Mr. LeVell is not a minister. He is a local Republican politician in Georgia. The campaign later apologized for the confusion, saying Mr. LeVell “is a prominent member” of his church.
On Monday night he was headed home to Atlanta on Mr. Trump’s private plane. Mr. Trump, he said, had invited him aboard.
“I got a free ticket,” Mr. LeVell explained.
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