Dear Mr. Trump, 'Yes, But, Uh, No Thanks. Chicago Wants No More MAGA Lies'
Dear Mr. Trump, 'Yes, But, Uh, No Thanks. Chicago Wants No More MAGA Lies'
“This is the most repulsive thing I’ve heard happening in Chicago since (Chicago Police Officer) Van Dyke shot” Laquan McDonald, 17, sixteen times, Rev. Robin Hood, Chicago pastor and activist.
By John W. Fountain
CHICAGO, July 30—Inviting Donald Trump to speak at the National Association of Black Journalists convention commencing here this week is like inviting a Latin King street gang to a Gangster Disciple party.
Laughable, befuddling and nonsensical, all at the same time.
The gang metaphor was the assessment of my good Chicago West Side friend, Rev. Robin Hood, a pastor and community activist with whom I spoke on the morning after news of Trump’s planned appearance broke like a thief in the night. The news shocked many a Black journalist whose responses erupted almost immediately on X in a firestorm of criticism. It also sparked anger, disappointment and questions among some local Black journalists and activists.
Hood’s reaction to hearing the news Monday night: “I wanted to throw up,” he said. And yet, “here comes the king of MAGA to the Black Journalist convention.”
“This is the most repulsive thing I’ve heard happening in Chicago since (Chicago Police Officer Jason) Van Dyke shot” Laquan McDonald, 17, sixteen times, Hood told me.
Bottom line: Dear Mr. Trump, you’re not welcome here with your aura and rhetoric of inglorious divisiveness and spirit of insurrection and of restoring the winds of the Confederacy. Yes, but, uh, no thanks. Chicago wants no more MAGA lies.
And hey, Dear NABJ, I love y’all. But respectfully, on this one, y’all don’t speak for me.
(Side note: Apparently, a group of Chicago organizers is planning to protest Trump’s appearance scheduled for 12 p.m. Wednesday at the Hilton Chicago. Stay tuned.)
Ok. so maybe you might have to be from Chicago to “get” the Latin King/GD analogy. So let me try and break it down.
The two gangs are bitter rivals. It would be like inviting the head of the Hatfields to speak at a reunion of the McCoys. Or the president of the Confederacy to come and chop it up at a Union party. Or one of the Proud Boys to a NAACP convention. You get the picture?
In the words of Kendrick Lamar: “They not like us.”
In this instance, “they” is Trump.
Frankly, as a member of NABJ and a Black journalist for more than 30 years, the news admittedly has left me scratching my bald head over why the former president and current Republican presidential nominee would be allowed to speak at our beloved convention. And of all places here, in Chicago—about which during his presidency Trump most often only seemed to have negative things to say, prompting former Mayor Lori Lightfoot at one point to tell him to “keep Chicago out of your lying mouth.”
Chicago is sweet home Chicago for most visitors. But there is no love lost for Mr. Trump here. This happens to be the same city where, during a planned campaign stop at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion where thousands gathered outside and hundreds more inside, a Trump rally had to be canceled due to security concerns. This is that same Chicago, which as president he called “worse than Afghanistan,” “embarrassing to us as a nation” and promised to “send in the feds” to clean up the “horrible carnage going on.”
Chicago—first settled by a Black man—Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable. Northern city of promise for Blacks fleeing the South and Jim Crow in the Great Migration. Chicago. Home to Emmett Louis Till, Jesse Louis Jackson, and the Nation of Islam. This is fictional Bigger Thomas’ town. It is home t Lorraine Hansberry, Fred Hampton and Ida B. Wells.
The Hilton Chicago, where Trump is scheduled to speak (by the way, the same hotel, where outside on Michigan Avenue Chicago police beat protestors bloody during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968) is a stone’s throw from Ida B. Wells Drive.
And Trump’s underlying campaign message of “Making America Great Again”; our memories of his 2020 “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys; his attack on truth, on journalism and its practitioners, more specifically on Black journalists; his past public record of using words like “that dog,” “a loser,” “nasty” and of “low IQ” when referring to Black women; his proximity to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial and God-awful Project 2025; and a plethora of sins of commission and omission that have caused many a Black leader to flat out call Trump a racist still reverberate here.
Matter of fact, it makes some of us homers wonder why Trump would even be welcomed to the party, so to speak, in the first place, let alone to a party held by NABJ. In the aftermath of the news of Trump’s scheduled appearance at NABJ, Karen Attiah, co-chair of this year’s convention in Chicago, announced Wednesday on X she was stepping down.
“While my decision was influenced by a variety of factors, I was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format,” her post reads.
Truth is, we already know who Trump is. And speaking at NABJ will likely only assure one thing from the former president: More lies.
For some detractors, however, the main issue isn’t with the format but with Trump’s mere presence at the convention.
A twice impeached former president, a 34-counts convicted felon, and self-admitted grabber of women by their lower genitalia, he is not known exactly to be a “friend” to the Black community. This despite his continued claims of having “accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.”
Add to that his campaign’s current assertion that: “Historic rates of Black voters now support President Trump, and the reason is simple: Black voters know that President Trump is the only presidential candidate who can deliver results on day one because he already has.”
Before I call BS—as a Black man born and bred here in the Chi, on the other side of the tracks where blight, poverty and a disconnection from the American dream are as glaring as the former president’s hair—let me first say that news of Trump’s planned appearance at NABJ came as a shock.
At about 9:12 p.m., Monday an email from NABJ popped into my inbox. That was soon followed by a series of text messages from friends asking if the news was true. I confirmed it was.
Indeed at the convention’s opening on Wednesday at high noon, Trump is the scheduled to appear before Black journalists for a Q&A with hand-picked interviewers Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, anchor of The Faulkner Focus and co-host of Outnumbered on FOX News; and Kadia Goba, politics reporter at Semafor.
No shade, but who?
More importantly, why not also, or instead, MSNBC’s Joy Reid, or Don Lemon, or Roland Martin, or some other Black journalists, maybe a hometown Black reporter, who are not likely to pitch soft-ball questions and who might be more likely to call Trump out on his lies in real time?
“News outlets continue to point out the facts and date that he continues to lie and fabricate truths with no apology,” Father Michael L. Pfleger, Chicago community activist and senior pastor of The Faith Community of St. Sabina, told me. “So I wonder why would the NABJ give him such an important platform to continue to spew his lies out.
“The good may be that the lies he speaks, particularly those claiming how he has helped the African American community ‘more than any president,’” become even more apparent, added Pfleger. “But the harm is he will just continue to lie. And the problem is (that) in the shallow world in which we live, the more the lie is told, the more some will begin to believe it.”
Some of us still remember the full-page ad placed by “Donald J. Trump” in major New York newspapers in 1989 amid the Central Park Jogger rape and beating case. The ad blared, “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!”
“Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Trump’s ad read. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”
Except the five black and Latino teens accused were wrongly convicted and subsequently exonerated after the real killer—with DNA to match—confessed years later.
“But that was years ago,” I can hear critics say.
“What about now?”
“What about democracy, a free press, and the search for truth?”
“What about the chance for Trump to stand before the National Association of Black Journalists and deliver?”
Ken Lemon NABJ president, posted on his X account Wednesday amid the fury unleashed by Black journalists over Trump’s scheduled appearance: “This is a great opportunity for us to vet the candidate right here on our ground, and that's what we do.”
Truth is, we already know who Trump is. And speaking at NABJ will likely only assure one thing from the former president: More lies.
This much for me is also clear: Racist bigots who hate people who are Black like me—sure do love them the hell out of some Trump.
“He’s already said the media is the enemy,” Rev. Hood told me. “This man is the personification of evil. I can’t believe they would bring him here to say anything.”
Me neither, my brother. But I can’t speak for NABJ.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Thanks kindly for your note. ...I think I will sit this one out. Trump has had plenty good time to say who he is. we know who he is by now. And as the song goes, "If you don't know me by now..."
We'll see with Kamala. We still need to know her record and exactly who she is. Thanks again. JOHN
I hope you would go to hear what lies he will say. I hope he will be challenged. And you journalists can let the people know he hasn’t changed. I finally feel hope with Kamala and I hope she gets the Black votes