NYT Leaked Trump’s Prepared Answers for Black Church Interview

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who lags far behind Hillary Clinton in African American support, will have some scripted answers to rely on for an interview he’s taping with a black pastor Saturday in his first public appearance before a majority black audience in Detroit.

The New York Times obtained a leaked 8-page script prepared by his campaign that has answers to the 12 questions Bishop Wayne T. Jackson will ask Trump when the candidate pays a visit to Detroit’s Great Faith Ministries International. Trump will sit down for a closed-door session with the pastor, and the interview is expected to air several days later on the Impact Network, Jackson’s cable television channel on the Christian faith. 

The interview questions, the Times reported, range from Trump’s relationship with God to views among African American voters that the Republican party can be racist. 

The prepared responses are a departure from Trump’s usual diatribes on rival Hillary Clinton’s “bigotry” and negative impacts on black communities. 

Instead, Trump is expected to offer up his own optimistic vision for race relations under his administration.  “If we are to make America great again, we must reduce, rather than highlight, issues of race in this country,” Trump is expected to say. “I want to make race disappear as a factor in government and governance.”

To another question posed by Bishop Jackson on whether Trump’s campaign is racist, the candidate is advised not to repeat the word. 

“The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding,” the script says. “Coming into a community is meaningless unless we offer an alternative to the horrible progressive agenda that has perpetuated a permanent underclass in America.” 

And in addressing undecided black voters, the Times noted the script cleaves close to Trump’s usual rhetoric: “If you want a strong partner in this journey, you will vote for me. I will never let you down...By the way, my support is now up to 8 percent and climbing.”

Trump, who has also struggled with answering questions about his faith, is also getting coached on his views about God. 

When the candidate is asked “Are you a Christian and do you believe the Bible is an inspired word of God?” the script offers this response from Trump: “As I went through my life, things got busy with business, but my family kept me grounded to the truth and the word of God...I treasure my relationship with my family, and through them, I have a strong faith enriched by an ever-wonderful God.”

While in Detroit, Trump will attend a two-hour church service and is also expected to address the Great Faith Ministries congregation for a few minutes. According to the Times, he will also spend about 30 minutes mingling with church members.

 REENA FLORES CBS NEWS

Pastor of Church Trump Will Visit Today is Being Called a Judas

The pastor who will interview Donald Trump at a black Detroit church on Saturday is responding to a deluge of criticism from people unhappy about the GOP presidential nominee's visit.

In a series of interviews and social media posts over the past week, Bishop Wayne T. Jackson has defended his decision to invite Trump to his church and to be interviewed on Jackson’s television channel, Impact Network.

"This interview is not an endorsement,” Jackson wrote on Facebook this week. "This is engagement. We have given Hillary Clinton the same opportunity as Donald Trump and she has not yet responded. This is not to put one up above the other but you gotta understand that we are in a race, and there’s two people in the race. This is to inform our community of what he will do if elected."

It seems many of Jackson’s followers are not convinced. On Friday, his social media team warned on Facebook that it would be removing comments that resort to name-calling or use foul language.

But plenty of comments from unhappy users can still be seen on the page.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that aides at the Republican National Committee and in Trump’s campaign had written an eight-page script detailing how the businessman should respond to a dozen questions that Jackson had submitted in advance.

“With all respect I ask you to please refuse to participate in the Trump ‘interview’ unless you are allowed to ask some unscripted questions,” read one comment from a man named Michael Bradley. “Otherwise I would see it as a sham, nothing more than a campaign advertisement and not an interview in any way.”

“That's incredible that you would ask everybody on here to be respectful and civil when you are interviewing someone who never display that,” Kerry Hill said in response to the warning that asked users to refrain from name-calling.

Other inflammatory comments call Jackson “a spawn of the devil,” accuse him of being paid off by Trump and label the event propaganda.

Jackson himself has acknowledged that the candidate tends to evoke anger among black voters — a recent Public Policy Polling survey showed Trump had zero percent support among African Americans.

“There’s a lot of emotions going on right now — people are upset that he’s coming to Detroit,” Jackson told The Detroit News this week. “But if we don’t sit down to talk to him, we’ll never know what his policies are.”

Still, Jackson maintains that by interviewing Trump on his Impact Network, he is helping to inform his viewers. He also says that the candidate has a right to make his case to black voters.

“We’re not here to say we agree,” the bishop wrote in another Facebook post. “We’re here to listen. A person who committed murder, killed a child, whatever it may be, we still give them a right in our nation to be heard. We need to hear both sides.”

“My phone has been burning up,” Jackson told the Detroit Free Press. “And the things people are asking: ‘Is Donald Trump paying me off?’ They haven’t paid me off. You haven’t looked at me and seen a man who’s needed things, I’ve always been blessed. It’s not about being a Judas to my people.”

Trump's visit to Jackson’s church, Great Faith Ministries, was first announced Aug. 28 in a statement by Pastor Mark Burns, a Trump surrogate who a day later set off a firestorm by tweeting a cartoon of Democrat Hillary Clinton in blackface. Burns has his own show on the Impact Network.

Jackson had said in interviews this week that he planned to ask Trump if there’s any truth to the accusations of racism that have plagued his campaign for more than a year. The leaked script shows that Jackson will also ask how Trump can change black voters’ mistrust of the GOP, given that Republican candidates rarely appear in black communities.

“The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding,” reads Trump’s scripted answer. “Coming into a community is meaningless unless we can offer an alternative to the horrible progressive agenda that has perpetuated a permanent underclass in America.”

The Clinton campaign slammed Trump for the prepared script, saying that the fact that his team feels the need to provide him with a script shows that he is unfamiliar with the issues important to black voters and uncomfortable discussing them.

“Donald Trump's latest gimmick to act as if he cares about the black community is downright shameful, insulting and cowardly,” Clinton aide Marlon Marshall said in a statement.

“After 14 months of neglecting us, Donald Trump is once again dodging substantive conversations and ducking questions about the issues that impact our community.

Harper Neidig

The Hill