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BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Hi, everyone.
I'm Bianna Golodryga and this is Yahoo News Live.
Well, we were supposed to be bringing you a live press
conference that the Donald Trump for President campaign
had billed as an endorsement from 100
African-American evangelical pastors and religious leaders.
That press conference has now been canceled.
The campaign now says the event is
a private, informational, quote, "meet and greet"
with the GOP front runner.
Here's Trump's explanation of what happened.
DONALD TRUMP: And I was told it was an endorsement.
And that was fine.
Whether it is or not, that's fine.
I think having a meeting is a good thing anyway.
And there were quite a few.
And I think what happened probably,
it gets publicity unfortunately, as everything I do
gets publicity.
And probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them
up, say, oh, you shouldn't be meeting with Trump because he
believes that all lives better.
I believe black lives do matter, but I believe all lives matter,
very strongly.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Hunter Walker is a national correspondent
at Yahoo News.
And Kirsten John Foy is a Pentecostal minister
and the northeast regional director of the National Action
Network.
Thank you gentlemen both for joining us.
Hunter, I want to begin with you.
Talk about what happened.
How big of a deal was this cancellation,
given that Donald Trump has historically never really
backed down from anything?
And what role may you have played in any of this?
HUNTER WALKER: Well, I don't know about that.
But we've never seen in this campaign him
canceling an event ahead of time like this.
So it was definitely unique.
And he holds these press conferences at Trump Tower.
And that's really the majority of his events here in New York.
So it was very, very odd.
We were all waiting to get credentialed,
and then the event basically evaporated.
I don't know if we played a role,
but we certainly were in communication
with Minister Foy and the National Action Network.
And I think that once they were made aware of the event,
there might have been some maneuvering behind the scenes.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Minister, I want
to ask you as a religious leader in the African-American
community, what was your first thought when
you heard about this event taking place
in the first place?
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: Oh, Lord.
That was my initial thought for-- fit for television.
We have a diverse community, politically diverse community.
There are a lot of conservative pastors and clerical folks.
But this was, I think, a shocker for us, and not
so much that they were having this meeting,
but that he was able to pull off a meeting,
pull off what initially was billed as an endorsement
meeting of 100 or so evangelical leaders, many of which
we have working relationships with,
without hearing about it until after it was said.
But we did talk to some of the folks who
were surprised that it was billed
as an endorsement meeting themselves.
So as the fog cleared, it wound up,
however it happened, Hunter playing quarterback here,
it wound up being just an informational meeting
with religious leaders, which I think is OK,
but I think should be a red flag for the Democratic Party.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: In what sense?
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: Well, if a guy like Trump
can access and then organize this many black clergypeople
and leaders, that means there's a void there
that he stepped into.
And if I were a Democrat running a Presidential campaign,
I would be concerned that there was this void.
And that void exists because the Democratic Party is taking
the black church for granted.
Many people are taking, and have taken the black church
for granted.
We seem to have a one track mind-- either we're
in the streets and we're protesting
and we're Black Lives Matter, or we're conservative
and we wear suits and we're in church.
And that paradigm is not necessarily accurate.
But it's also dangerous to believe
that speaking to one or the other without speaking to all
will get you what you need out of the black vote.
The black vote is as diverse as I think any other voting
bloc in this country.
Although we tend to be more loyal to the Democratic Party,
we may be seeing a sea shift.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And so you think
that this meeting, however it was organized
and however it was presented, should
have been a direct threat to Hillary Clinton
and she should be worried about this kind of event.
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: To Hillary Clinton, to Bernie Sanders,
to all of the down ballot candidates.
There's is a race for who's going to control the House
and who is going to control the Congress and the statehouses.
I mean, it reverberates all the way down.
And this is a threat to Hillary Clinton.
But I would be more concerned if I was running for Congress,
say in South Carolina, or if I was
running for Congress in Pennsylvania
in a purple district.
I would be concerned that the Republicans are now
penetrating what would have been my natural base.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: They sense a weakness is what you're saying.
And Hunter, this comes just weeks after a Black Lives
Matter protester was roughed up at a Trump event in Alabama.
Trump said, quote, "maybe he should have been roughed up."
Trump also tweeted this chart that
overstated the percentage of white *** victims killed
by blacks.
Was this event a response to the press
surrounding those two incidents, and what is the campaign
trying to accomplish, whether or not
this is an endorsement meeting or just a
meet and greet type of meeting?
HUNTER WALKER: Well, that's a really good question.
And the Trump campaign recently has
been in a defensive mode, so it's
kind of hard to get information out of them and answers
to these types of questions.
We've seen this thing that the networks revolted
against with reporters being kept
in sort of pens at his events.
And we've seen the recent back and forth
with him attacking the press that's covering him,
and then this event evaporating and us being told
it was no press.
So I can't say I know what they were thinking.
I think you are certainly right to point
to those instances in which his stance on racial issues
was questioned.
This does seem like a rebuttal to that.
And one other important thing to note
in terms of the cancellation here,
those two events were cited in a letter, an open letter that
was published in Ebony with a whole slate
of African-American clergypeople who were questioning why anyone
would meet with Trump, let alone endorse him,
given what they described as a history
of damaging and racist rhetoric.
So I think that's also part of the evidence of communication
from other members of the African-American religious
community that may have shut this down.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And Pastor, I want to stick on that note.
Because one of your counterparts, Bishop Victor
Cousin, said he wanted to hear specifics from Trump
on issues relevant to the African-American community.
Cindy Trim said she would attend the meeting for a greater
cause, and that's unity as a community.
Given how divisive the country is right now,
do you think that these types of meetings
to where even if you don't agree on subject matter,
but a meeting where you meet and talk to each other eye to eye,
face to face-- do you think that that is important, especially
during an election year, and with a front runner
nonetheless?
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: I think it's important,
but it's also telling about the state
of our political dialogue.
We have gotten to a point where you get credit
for just talking to someone.
And you get credit for not shouting.
And you get credit for being able to tolerate their presence
within your personal vicinity.
I think that our political landscape has declined.
I think the dialogue-- there is no class in the political class
anymore.
And so we've gotten to a point where
if you're willing to meet, then you've scored some points.
And that's telling about the state
of politics in our country.
I do think, however, it is important to challenge everyone
who wants to be President of the United States
about what their policies are going to be.
I think it's appropriate for every candidate
to access and to grant access to every community that
wants it and wants to play a part of the political process,
to be able to have these kinds of dialogues.
I don't know what's going to come out
of a conversation with Donald Trump about immigration
that would be anything new.
I don't know what's going to come out
of a meeting with Donald Trump about criminal justice
that would be anything new.
But if folks want to have that access,
they should have that access.
But I do think it's incredibly important to remember
that we as pastors and as clergy folks,
we are entrusted by our congregations to lead them
but also to represent them.
And most of these pastors and congregations
are going to be impacted negatively by demagoguery,
as it relates to immigration and as it relates
to criminal justice, as it relates to minimum wage and all
these other things that we have found
Mr. Trump to be a demagogue on.
Those things directly impacted congregations.
Many of them would not have a congregation
if it were not for immigrants who are here.
So they should be careful about how close they
are willing to get to someone just to bask in their glow.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And something at the forefront
of society today is the issue of race relations.
Yet it's not a topic that we see covered much
during, let's say, presidential debates,
both Democratic or Republican.
We were talking about the Black Lives Matter
movement and that rally in Alabama for Trump.
This movement was born while President Obama
has been in office.
In fact, one of the organization leaders
told me that he would give the President an F when
it came to the amount of attention
and focus he put on race relations.
How would you assess President Obama's leadership,
given all of the headlines we've seen,
especially over the past few years,
and just recently out of Chicago?
How would you rate this President's role?
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: Well, I think there's two ways to do it.
One way to do it is relative-- how has he
been relative to his predecessors, versus how
has he been relative to your expectations of him?
And I think many in the black community
have had great expectations of President Obama
as it relates to race relations.
Others have not had so great a set of expectations.
Relative to his predecessors, there's
no there's no question about it.
This is the most diverse cabinet we've seen.
We've seen the most "progressive"--
I've put quotations around that--
policy that we've seen in years coming out of this
administration that have positively impacted the black
community, Latino community, whether we're talking about
the Affordable Care Act or we're now talking about this very
robust conversation around criminal justice reform
and prison reform.
Relative to his predecessors, he's been excellent.
Relative to our expectations of him, I think we wanted more.
We expected more.
We hoped for more.
But we are dealing with what we got.
And the circumstance we're in now, we're going to capitalize.
To say that this president has been
more willing to talk about the most taboo subjects
in our society, whether we're talking
about black male incarceration or we're
talking about closing Abu Ghraib prison,
these conversations are not easy to have.
And they're certainly not easy to have
in a polarized environment like Washington
or a polarized country like we are in.
But he has been as courageous as I have seen any other president
be on any other topic or issue.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And one could argue, like the Black Lives
Matter leader argued, that actions speak louder
than words.
So these issues of course will be
inherited by whoever takes over for the White House
just next year.
Hunter, speaking of that, we're 60 days away
until the first vote in Iowa.
Trump is still leading in the polls, but by a smaller margin.
He has had a 12 point drop in one weekly national poll.
What is his strategy going forward now?
Does he have one?
HUNTER WALKER: That's a really interesting question,
and again I would point you back to my comments
before, that I'm not really in touch with the inner circle
at the moment.
But as of now, that Reuters poll is a bit of an outlier.
That was the 12 point drop.
He does seem to be doing well.
I think the key thing to understand with Trump,
and it's important as it relates to this question
of his position with the African-American community,
is that this is a guy who has a base of 20% of the Republican
Party.
They seem to be sticking with him, no matter what he says,
no matter what controversy happens.
And I think his strategy is basically
to preserve that base and hope that it really
does show up in Iowa, where you have caucus-based organizing--
a ground game is really, really important--
and take that to the finish line.
One thing he's doing though that's really, really
interesting is he's holding a lot of events outside
of the first four early states.
He's holding a lot of events in the South.
He's going to be in Georgia later today.
That is nowhere in the early primary calendar.
So I think he's trying to get a lot of national press
coverage for himself in lieu of buying ads.
He's also already got his eye on the general,
with how he's performing so far.
And I think that may be what he was attempting
to do with this meeting with African-American leadership.
Because their has been one poll, a Survey USA poll-- and again,
this is a bit of an outlier.
But it showed that he could get 20% of African-American support
in a general election.
Now, the Republican party is about 2% black,
so that would really be unheard of if he could pull that out.
So I think when we see him tour the South,
where much of his base is, when we see him reach out
to the black community, we're seeing
a guy who's got his eye on the general a bit already.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And as you mentioned,
as we conclude this interview, the fact
that he's even reaching out and focusing this much
on the black community and many are
willing to listen and at least meet
with him should be a warning sign for Democrats as well.
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY: Agreed.
And look, he has the savvy to realize that he can lambaste
Black Lives Matter one weekend and next week
meet with the black evangelical leadership.
He recognizes it's not a monolithic voting bloc.
And the Democrats have to play some catch-up.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, I appreciate you both joining us
today.
It's very interesting conversation.
To be continued, as they say.
Thank you so much for joining us.
And we always look forward to hearing what you have to say.
You can follow me on Twitter at BiannaGolodryga.
And use hashtag #YahooLive to let
us know what you think about the 2016 campaign for president.
Just over 60 days until Iowa.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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