NABJ Convention Gets Donald Trump Appearance Backlash, Kamala Harris Not Going

Vice President Kamala Harris will not be appearing at the NABJ Convention, as organizers deal with the backlash of Donald Trump being invited to speak there.

According to reports, Vice President Kamala Harris will not attend the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists taking place in Chicago. The news comes as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is slated to appear at the convention, sparking a massive backlash and online debate. A source close to the negotiations between the NABJ and Harris’ campaign team confirmed that the vice president’s schedule as her presidential election campaign is building up steam is preventing her from being physically present.

In a statement released on Wednesday morning (July 31), NABJ President Ken Lemon said that the “last update” they had received was that Vice President Harris “would not be available in person or virtually during our Convention.” Another source said that the NABJ had declined the suggestion from Harris’ team for a virtual panel initially, but is now fervently working to convince them to take part in a virtual town hall, claiming her appearance is “pending”. Another factor in the vice president not appearing at the convention, which begins on Wednesday and ends August 4 is her attendance at the funeral of the late Sheila Jackson-Lee, the longtime Congresswoman from Texas.

The NABJ is also dealing with the outrage from journalists and observers over the panel featuring Trump, which will be moderated by Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, and Semafor politics reporter Kadia Goba and was announced 48 hours before the convention’s start. NABJ’s political journalism chair, Tia Mitchell, defended the decision in a post on X, formerly Twitter, writing: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.”

Critics point to Trump’s history of demeaning Black people and his disregard for Black people in the past as a reason to disqualify him from appearing. “If a super conservative white woman can’t get straight answers out of him, what makes you think that three Black women are going to get them?”, journalist Matthew Wright said to The Guardian, citing Trump’s recent interview with Laura Ingraham.