“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible way,” Trump replied to ABC News’ Rachel Scott after she opened by reiterating his statements toward and about Black communities and asking why they should vote for him. “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”

“She was always of Indian heritage,” Trump said of Harris, who is the first Black woman and the first Asian-American to serve as vice president. “I didn’t know she was Black.”

As the questions continued from the panel, which included Scott, FOX News’ Harris Faulkner and Kadia Goba, politics reporter at Semafor, Trump continued to lay into the ABC News senior congressional correspondent, calling Scott “nasty” for her initial question. Shouts from the crowd of “false” and angry booing were intermittently heard as he spoke.

Trump also spent some time doing damage control on his VP pick, J.D. Vance and ultimately downplayed the power of a running mate after questions were asked about the junior senator’s remarks about women who do not have children. Toward the end of the event, the candidate said that on day one of his presidency, if he were to win, he would “close the border” and bring energy prices and interest rates down.

Trump left the stage shaking his head after his campaign team had decided to cut his appearance short.

His scheduled address and Q&A session in Chicago on Wednesday is tearing the organization apart, with the event’s co-chair resigning on Tuesday over the invite and other prominent members decrying the platforming of a candidate with a history of attacking the media and hurling racist comments toward Black women reporters.

Trump’s appearance at the event was announced in press release and launched criticism in Black media.  NABJ President Ken Lemon pointed out that the NABJ does not endorse political candidates as a journalism organization and “welcomes the opportunity for them to ask the tough questions that will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know.”

The former president is looking to court the Black vote, particularly after an Angus Reid Institute survey of 1,743 registered voters showed that just 12 percent of Black voters polled were backing his campaign. But that stands in sharp contrast to his history with Black reporters. In 2018, while speaking to a scrum of reporters outside of the White House, Trump called April Ryan a “loser” and “very nasty”; this was after he asked Ryan at a 2017 news conference if, as a Black woman, she could help set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. Posting on X, Ryan, who is currently the White House correspondent for The Grio and was 2017’s NABJ’s Journalist of the Year, bristled at the news of Trump’s appearance at the convention.

Organizers of the convention are on damage control. As the backlash grew, Atlanta Journal-Constitution correspondent Tia Mitchell, chair of the NABJ’s Political Journalism Task Force, defended what she said was her decision to invite the GOP presidential nominee: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.”

A note from Lemon on Wednesday assured attendees that Vice President Kamala Harris was invited to speak in Chicago well before President Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, but her schedule will not permit her to attend in person or virtually. This is still the case, Lemon wrote in the note, and the NABJ is looking at options for Harris to speak to the group in September.

However, Ryan reports at The Grio that the NABJ team initially had denied a request for Harris to appear in a virtual fireside chat but then, according to multiple sources, was scrambling this week to get the vice president’s team to consider a virtual town hall after the backlash surrounding Trump’s appearance grew. Team Harris declined as the NABJ had already declined the idea of a virtual appearance, Ryan reports.

Lemon also explained that the Trump invitation is protocol and consistent with past election year conventions.

“I consulted with a group of our Founders and past NABJ Presidents Tuesday on-site in Chicago, and as a group, we affirmed that the invitation to Former President Trump was in line with NABJ’s usual practices since 1976,” Lemon wrote. “It has always been our policy to ensure that candidates know that an invitation is not an endorsement. We also agreed that while this race is much different — and contentious — so are the consequences.”