Ken Lemon, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), said Wednesday’s interview with former President Trump was delayed because of a dispute over fact-checking, not because of audio issues, as the Republican presidential candidate claimed.
Lemon told Axios. He was called back to discuss an issue just before Trump was due to take the stage, but Trump didn’t want to be fact-checked live and refused to start the interview, he said.
“[Trump’s team] “I said, ‘Well, why don’t you fact check it? If you fact check it, he won’t be on stage,'” Lemon said.
The NABJ’s decision to interview Trump drew criticism from some, including from some of the association’s own members, and the Q&A got tense at times as ABC reporter Rachel Scott pressed the former president about past comments he’s made about black voters.
The interview was delayed for more than an hour before Trump took to the stage with Scott, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and Semaphore’s Kadia Goba.
Trump said the delay was due to an audio issue. Lemon told Axios there were technical issues with the audio but that it was “quickly resolved.”
“The bigger issue is that he agreed to be onstage and then he threatened not to be onstage,” Lemon said. “He didn’t want to be fact-checked, but we couldn’t let him onstage without being fact-checked.”
Lemon said he was ready to prepare a written statement to explain to the public the reasons for Trump’s delay as the controversy dragged on.
He said there was “no compromise” on the issue, but as he began to prepare a statement, Trump appeared onstage.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang told Axios that they had been waiting “close to 40 minutes” for NABJ to resolve the audio issue.
Lemon said Trump’s team asked them not to post the fact checks on their social media pages and not to disclose their existence to reporters, and NABJ complied with both requests.
Daniel Alvarez, a senior adviser to Trump, said in a statement to The Hill that NABJ should have told the truth about the audio issues “which caused delays to the show.”
“When President Trump took to the stage he was met with hostility and unprofessionalism from some errant members of the media,” Alvarez said. “President Trump will continue to bypass the biased media and take his record of victory and message of prosperity directly to the Black community, as he did this weekend in Atlanta.”
During the meeting, the former president raised eyebrows when he spoke about a new challenger, Vice President Harris.
Trump said he did not know Harris was black “until a few years ago, when I happened to be black,” and that Harris had always thought of herself as “Indian.”
Harris is black and of Indian descent.
The Hill has reached out to NABJ for further comment.
— Updated 3:41 p.m.
