Several black pastors shredded Trump in the press, forcing his campaign to cancel a Monday press conference originally intended to announce their support.
The press conference had been promoted by Donald Trump’s campaign in a press release as “a coalition of 100 African American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders who will endorse the GOP front-runner after a private meeting at Trump Tower.”
However, as CNN reports: “Several black pastors invited to meet with Donald Trump on Monday have denied reports that they had plans to endorse the presidential candidate at the event.”
Bishop Corletta Vaughn, Senior Pastor and a star of the Oxygen reality series “Preachers of Detroit,” said she while she was invited to the event, she would not attend.
She posted on her Facebook page earlier that day that: “Trump is an insult and embarrassment. But he represents the country we have become,” adding “ZERO experience … Flaunting a ticket of unbridled bigotry, sexism, racism and everything that is wrong with America.”
Bishop Clarence McClendon, a Los Angeles-based pastor who has appeared on the reality television show “The Preachers of L.A.,” announced on Facebook that “The meeting was presented not as a meeting to endorse but a meeting to engage in dialogue,” adding that he will not make up his mind regarding an endorsement until some time in January 2016.
Bishop Paul S. Morton, a recording artist, author and founder of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, tweeted that he was refusing to meet with Trump until he learned “how to respect people.”
I was asked 2 meet with Mr Trump too but I refused because until he learns how to respect people you can't represent me thru my endorsement
— Bishop Paul S Morton (@BishopPMorton) November 27, 2015
Additionally, last Friday a group of “more than 100 Black religious leaders and scholars” wrote an open letter published by Ebony Magazine to the the “African-American ministers scheduled to meet with Donald Trump.”
Reminding the black clergy that Trump “admitted his supporters were justified for punching and kicking a Black protester who had attended a Trump rally with the intent to remind the crowd that ‘Black Lives Matter,'” they went on to warn them “Trump’s racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric should give those charged with the care of the spirits and souls of Black people great pause.”
They also wrote: “By siding with a presidential candidate whose rhetoric pathologizes Black people, what message are you sending to the world about the Black lives in and outside of your congregations? Which Black lives do you claim to be liberating?”
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