Washington Post editor Karen Attiah leads a discussion on Saudi hacking techniques at the 2019 Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway, on May 28, 2019.
Julia Reinhart |
The co-chair of the National Association of Black Journalists' annual convention resigned from his position on Tuesday, apparently in response to the association's decision to invite former President Donald Trump to speak at its convention and career fair in Chicago on Wednesday.
“I wish the best of luck to the journalists interviewing Trump,” NABJ24 convention co-chair Karen Attiah wrote in a social media post announcing her decision to step down. “To everyone else, I look forward to seeing and reconnecting with you all in the Windy City.”
“While my decision was influenced by a number of factors, I was in no way involved in the decision to provide a platform for Trump in such a format, nor was I consulted about it,” wrote Attiah, a Washington Post columnist who writes about international affairs, culture and human rights issues.
NABJ announced Monday that Republican presidential candidate Trump would “participate in a conversation with reporters” in front of attendees at the convention, sparking controversy among some members of the group.
The group said the event with Trump will be moderated by Rachel Scott, ABC News' chief congressional correspondent, Fox News' Harris Faulkner, host of The Faulkner Focus and co-host of Outnumbered, and Semafor political reporter Kadia Goba.
Attiah's announcement on Tuesday came several hours before a source familiar with Vice President Kamala Harris' plans said Harris, who is the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, would not attend the NABJ convention due to scheduling conflicts.
The NABJ team declined a request from Harris' team to participate virtually in a “fireside chat” at the convention, according to the person who spoke to NBC News.
Harris' father is black and her mother was born in India. If elected president, she would be the first woman and the first South Asian to be elected president.
Founded in 1975, NABJ is the largest association of journalists of color in the United States. Over the years, it has hosted speakers including then-Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
CNBC has reached out to Attiah and NABJ, as well as a spokesperson for Trump's presidential campaign, for comment on Attiah's resignation as convention co-chair.
NABJ President Ken Lemon said in a video tweeted Tuesday that his group's invitation to Trump was “absolutely not an endorsement” of the Republican candidate.
“Every year, every presidential election, we have invited the presidential candidates,” Lemon said. “We have invited both of them, we got a 'yes' from one of them, we would be happy to get a 'yes' from Kamala as well.”
“This is an opportunity for us to test the candidates in our field,” Lemon said.
Tia Mitchell, the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, responded to the controversy surrounding Trump's appearance in her own post on X, saying she helped organize the event as chair of the NABJ's political task force.
“I worked on this call. And it is consistent with the invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades,” Mitchell wrote in that X-post. “But keep up the good work. I will continue to work to give journalists the opportunity to interview the potential next president.”
Mitchell's post was visible only to users she had granted access to.
April Ryan, White House correspondent for The Grio and 2017 NABJ Journalist of the Year, sharply criticized the invitation to Trump.
“The reports of attacks by the then President of the United States on black female White House correspondents are not myths or conjecture, but facts,” Ryan wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.
“An allegedly staged meeting with the former president is an insult to what this organization stands for and a slap in the face to the black women journalists (NABJ Journalists of the Year) who have had to protect themselves from the wrath of this Republican presidential candidate who is pursuing an authoritarian agenda that envisions the destruction of this nation and its democracy with his Project 2025.”
During his presidency, Trump was criticized for racist remarks when he called Haiti and African countries “shithole countries” during a meeting with senators at the White House in 2018.
Trump's nephew Fred Trump III reported in his recently released memoir that he heard Donald Trump use the N-word twice after finding out his convertible had been slashed while he was parked. Trump's campaign said Fred Trump's claim was “total fake news of the highest order.”
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign trail in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, July 24, 2024.
Marco Bello | Reuters
Donald Trump and his father Fred Trump were sued by the Justice Department in 1973 for allegedly discriminating against black potential tenants in their New York City apartment complexes based on their race.
Donald Trump stressed that he and his father settled the case two years later “without admitting guilt.”
Attiah was named NABJ Journalist of the Year in 2019.
That same year, she and fellow Post columnist David Ignatius won a special George Polk Award, one of the most prestigious awards for American journalists, for their articles on the murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2018.
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Attiah, whose parents come from the African countries Ghana and Nigeria, had recruited and hired Khashoggi for the post office.
Trump, who was president at the time of Khashoggi's murder, rejected the CIA's conclusion that the murder was carried out on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In March 2020, when Trump was still in the White House, the State Department blamed Saudi government agents for the murder.
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