Cross on Trump at the NABJ: College Journalists Was Questioning Why the King of Disinformation Were on Stage

RUSH EXCERPT:
CROSS: "Thanks for having me. Of being in the room there were gasps and audible cheer specifically when he attacked the vice president about her race. It is a room that is 98% black. He is used to speaking to rooms that are 98% white. To walk in that room and assault black people and attack black journalist and her network at the same time and to have had such a fall, it was over an hour, maybe hour 15 minutes. I was sitting there hearing nabj officials talk about how they were planning on releasing a statement and having that conversation with those of us who were in attendance. Any of us had been sitting in the room for three hours waiting for him to take the stage. There was no conversation around what happened. What we found out is from whispers in the room from officials is he did not want to be live fact checked in anyway and he was not going to take the stage if that was going to happen. From start it was rough-and- tumble and within 30 seconds of the first question, which was literally a conversation that was basically a rundown of all the things he said about black journalist. All of the quotes that they have around some of the negativity that he has targeted specifically black women journalist in addition to black run cities. All of these things that have made black people not necessarily even give the Republican ticket a second look because they recognize that the race is coming from Donald Trump is real. He didn’t want to answer to his own quotes and how that came out within the first 20 seconds of being asked that question, people started walking out of the room, literally. The only reason we did not have more is because we were there were cheers going back and forth but the Secret Service was there to stop people from getting loud and rambunctious. In addition to that, this is a journalism conference, many of these individuals are mindful of their employers and trying not to do anything that could instigate not having a job the next day. The questions and the comments in the room were largely around why is he here at all? This is a journalism conference that has a theme of fighting disinformation. You have disinformation in chief speaking right now. I was in a row that was ahead of a student group, those student journalists who are still in college were questioning why we had a disinformation theme and we had the king of disinformation on the states. It did not jell well at all, especially in a city like Chicago that Donald Trump has had nothing good to say about this before he ran for elected office and in a room full of people that he does not speak to. His comments were not for black audience at all they were for the audience that he consistently talks to regularly."