At Least Now President Trump Knows Who 'CBC' Is
Given the chance, President Donald J. Trump can really turn on the charm.
"Throughout my campaign, I pledged to focus on improving conditions for African-American citizens," he said before a closed-door meeting with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus in the White House Wednesday. "This means more to me than anybody would understand or know."
Indeed. Candidate Trump did not always make that "focus" easy to know or understand. His orations on "inner cities" usually painted a dystopian vision of urban "carnage" and hopelessness that teetered between pity and demonization. His best argument for African-Americans to vote for him at one point was, "What do you have to lose?"
Yet this meeting was remarkable not for what it accomplished, which reportedly wasn't much more than a get-acquainted chat, but that it happened at all.
It grew out of an awkward incident last month during Trump's 77-minute news conference. April Ryan, a black reporter with the American Urban Radio Networks, asked the president if he was going to meet with the "CBC" and Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
At first, Trump sounded as though he did not know what "CBC" stood for. Ryan patiently told him and he immediately asked her if she would set up the meeting -- as if that were a proper role for a reporter to play.
CBC member Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, said later that he detected "an element of disrespect" in Trump's comment. He wasn't alone. But in the spirit of the CBC motto -- "Black people have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies ... just permanent interests" -- the news conference episode led to Wednesday's meeting at the White House.
Rep. Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana, the CBC's chairman, was joined by Rep. Clyburn and five other members of the organization's executive board: Reps. Karen Bass of California, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, Brenda Lawrence of Michigan, André Carson of Indiana and Anthony G. Brown of Maryland.
They presented the president with a 130-page policy memo titled with a response to Trump's campaign question: "A Lot to Lose."
The report offers a broad list of the CBC's priorities, predictably geared to New Deal liberalism at odds with Trump's new brand of post-Reagan conservative populism. Yet CBC leaders assured reporters afterwards that there are important areas on which both parties can work together, such as Trump's proposed infrastructure repair projects and violence-reduction measures in cities like Chicago, one of the president's favorite urban talking points.
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