In a recent event where former President Donald Trump had disagreements with an interviewer, Fox News host Harris Faulkner said the coverage "was not fair" and issued a warning that using race to "divide" America is not what Trump or his campaign stand for.
At the National Association of Black Journalists conference, former President Trump was interviewed by a panel including Fox News host Faulkner, ABC News reporter Rachel Scott and Semafor reporter Kadia Goba where Trump clashed with Scott when she asked about his criticism of left-wing Congress members, fellow candidate for president Nikki Haley, and bold statement that he didn't know Harris Faulkner "was black" until a few years ago. Faulkner described the questions an attempt to derail the event noting that conference tried to disinvite the former president from the event.
“So much of what America is focused on and so much of what it started with all that emotion and the gotcha moments from the interviewer who was seated directly to his left, has really overtaken the fact that we had an opportunity to talk with the president who walked into a racial storm yesterday,” Faulkner said referencing the first question asked by Scott to start the discussion “There were journalists, activists, whatever you want to call people who let their politics show who wanted the NABJ to rescind their offer to have the 45th president of the United States come and sit.”
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Faulkner blasted Scott for not even acknowledging that Trump survived an assassination attempt and her very first question “got things off to an emotional start."
“I mean, it did not take much to show humanity, and in that moment, I was so disappointed that that did not happen,” Faulkner described. “I couldn’t control it, but it got things off to an emotional start, and you and I both know that once that happens and you are interviewing someone, there is an agenda, and I’m glad that you guys played a clip of that because America and the journalists in the room who, by the way, sat and listened, somewhere laughing with the president, little jokes and quips he was making, there were some critical in the audience too, but it was expressed respectively or respectfully rather, there was a way to take some of the energy out of that moment with that reporter.”
Of course the main stream media ran with the opportunity to bash Trump because of the exchange but Faulkner warned fellow journalists that pushing their agenda only makes the divisions in the United States worse rather than doing their jobs of asking tough and fair questions that the American public actually wants to hear.
“I can’t impress upon you how much complicity there is, potential complicity, for mainstream media to lock in on the issue of race and to divide us as a nation further if we don’t carefully call out when we don’t see things being treated fairly,” the Fox News host said. “And you know what? I will take some heat from it, for it, rather, in certain circles of journalism. My home is Fox News; our viewers deserve the truth, and that moment was not fair.”