President Trump…
… sorry, that’s been happening a lot since November….
… President Trump held an impromptu news conference on Thursday, discussing everything from the National Guard to election results. Within that rambling mess of a conference, one item struck a nerve with me: his segment on inner city violence. President Trump mentioned how he had a plan to curtain the violence in the Middle East the inner cities, when April Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, asked if he would also have input from the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus). This link from ABC News has the results of that question:
Ignoring his tone throughout this press conference, I’ve come up with 3 possible reasons for his answer to Ryan:
- He was being an odd mix of flippant, sardonic, and condescending to Mrs. Ryan
- He honestly had no clue about the Congressional Black Caucus
- He is as bigoted/racist as 95% of his opponents and critics claim
Before breaking that down, here is some info on the CBC:
That was the 3rd result from a simple Google search, by the way. Easy info to get, President.
1) Maybe Trump was dismissing Ryan’s question. If so, the way he did it was, at best, ‘offensive’. As someone who does not get too easily offended by stuff, I bristled a little at his comment. You are the President of the United States – it’s time to start acting and speaking like one, not like a 12 year old who’s trying to show off to his friends by berating a classmate. “I’ll look into all options”, “I’ll see what I can set up with the CBC”, “Possibly” are all answers that should have come out of his mouth before the one in that ABC link.
2) If he did not know about the CBC, and he is President, then Kellyanne Conway (Chief Political Advisor) or Sean Spicer (White House Press Secretary) aren’t doing their jobs. How could neither of them brief Trump on what the Congressional Black Caucus is and who’s in it, by now? If Trump did this press conference unannounced, and neither Conway nor Spicer had time to go over his speech with him, then they are off the hook and his ignorance is all on him.
3) I’m not the judge on that. However, it’s hard to argue against it.
I feel that President Trump displayed a not-cute-or-clever dose of #1 to April Ryan. His answer was unwarranted, offensive, and came off as borderline bullying and bigoted. We – Black folks – don’t “all know each other” and can’t “talk to ‘our’ people” to set up meetings. It’s these kind of snide remarks, especially to public figures, that we’ve had to hear and endure throughout the Obama presidency; judging from this press conference and from some truly idiotic Facebook statuses over the last 3 months, it looks like we will have to deal with them so more, throughout the Trump pres….
… presidency.
The Nexus 