Fox News’ Harris Faulkner said much of the audience enjoyed her interview with former President Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists’ (NABJ) annual conference on Wednesday, despite “a few controversies at the podium.”
Faulkner, who co-hosted the event with ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Semaphore’s Kadia Goba, joined Fox News’ Martha MacCallum after the interview to describe the atmosphere inside the room, where Trump’s aggressive tone at times sparked negative and heated reactions from the audience.
Asked for a “behind the scenes” perspective on some of the heated moments, Faulkner first noted that prior to the interview, NABJ journalists had objected that the organization should not interview Trump, and said he was pleased to see that many in attendance seemed pleased that Trump had agreed to the interview.
“What the country saw was this incredible excitement with reports flying around that some of the journalists here were upset that Donald Trump was coming, and then there were some who really hadn’t been heard from,” Faulkner said of journalists at the convention. “So what you didn’t see today, but what I loved, was how many of the audience members enjoyed that moment of hearing from a candidate that they didn’t necessarily agree with.”
“So despite the backlash, the young journalists I spoke to after the event were like, ‘Well, I’m glad he was here,'” Faulkner added.
Faulkner later acknowledged that “it definitely got a little tense” as the former president dodged questions and blamed some of the controversy on technical issues, which Faulkner said made it hard for people onstage to hear each other.
“In terms of a former president answering questions, Martha, you and I have both interviewed him, and it’s an interesting journey that you go through, but you have to keep pushing,” Faulkner told McCallum.
“There was a bit of a controversy on stage about whether Trump could hear and, if he could, whether he would answer questions,” she continued, referring to Trump.
Faulkner noted the lively reactions of his audience and appeared to speak slowly and choose his words carefully when describing what he saw.
“It got a little cranky at times in terms of the audience shouting back or reacting to him in some way,” Faulkner said, “but for the most part they were laughing and they were kind of getting something they didn’t get before, which was a way to connect with someone they see a lot on TV but don’t know much about his policies.”
Trump’s performance in the NABJ interview was widely panned by Democrats, as he pushed back against tough questions about his background, accused the panel’s black moderator of using a “hostile” and “nasty” tone and questioned the origins of his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“She’s always been Indian. And she’s just advertised that she’s Indian. I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago, when she became black. And now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said of Harris. “So I don’t know if she’s Indian or black.”
“She always identified as a black woman,” Scott interjected.
“But, you know, I respect both people,” Trump said, “but she clearly isn’t. She’s been Indian her whole life and then all of a sudden she turns around and she’s black. I think somebody should look into that.”
Harris is both Indian-American and African-American — her mother immigrated from India and her father from Jamaica — and she attended Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., where she was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
