Trump enthusiastic after meeting with black pastors

A planned press conference with Trump and the ministers was called off after the group objected to his campaign touting it as an endorsement, but Sharpton sounded a skeptical note even about the meeting.

Trump sent out word to media outlets last week that he would hold an early afternoon news conference Monday to announce the endorsement of his campaign by “100 African American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders…after a private meeting”.

Many of Trump’s falsehoods and exaggerations have one of two key characteristics in common: they are either lies about something that happened in the past or wildly unlikely predictions about something that will happen in the relatively distant (and therefore unknowable) future.

A number of public officials have disputed Trump’s claims, including fellow Republican candidate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who said: “I think if it had happened, I would remember it”.

Finally, on Monday, the Trump campaign conceded that, while the meeting would still take place, it wouldn’t be an endorsement.

Asked whether he would support Trump if he wins the GOP nomination, Bush said he’s confident that the more voters “hear of him, the less likely he’s going to get the Republican nomination”.

“This is the pattern perhaps of an entertainer”, she said. “ZERO experience … flaunting a ticket of unbridled bigotry, sexism, racism and everything that is wrong with America”, said Vaughn.

Bishop Clarence McClendon from Los Angeles was another who said he had been invited – but did not plan to attend.

Trump also said he supported the idea of requiring all Muslims living in the United States to register in a special database as a counter-terrorism measure.

Bishop Paul Morton, founder of The Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, also said he was steering clear. With one hand he offers you the spectacle of an endorsement by 100 black religious leaders and with the other, he gives you – Georgia! Yay!

On Sunday he tweeted: “Will be meeting on Monday at Trump Tower with a large group of African American Pastors”.

In an op-ed in EBONY magazine published Friday, pastors, seminary professors and Christian activists critical of Trump asked the group backing the candidate to consider the impact that endorsing him could have on their congregations.

Then last week Trump tweeted out bogus crime statistics alleging that blacks commit the majority of homicides of both black and white people, which is false. The website PolitiFact said the correct figure from the Department of Justice was 15 percent. Naturally, their discussion turned towards Trump’s recent comments about 9/11 – in which he claims to have seen “thousands” of people cheering in Jersey City, New Jersey as the WTC towers came down in New York City. “I’m not going to take it back”.

However, after numerous clergy members repudiated the statement, the campaign announced on Sunday they had canceled the press conference and would instead host an “i” that would be closed to the press, according to the Washington Post.