‘Unprofessional’: The Irony Of Sage Steele, Other MAGAts Whining About NABJ Questions To Trump

Trump visits the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31, 2024, in Chicago. | Source: Jason Armond / Getty

D onald Trump , his campaign and conservative pundits across right-wing media are working overtime to clean up and spin Trump’s disastrous appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists ( NABJ ) Wednesday, and they’re largely doing so by attacking Rachel Scott, the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News whose first question to Trump revolved around the racism and aggression he has leveled against Black journalists and the white nationalist he has broken bread with (which is like saying Skeletor broke bread with Mumm Ra, but whatever).

Everyone who doesn’t have wet dreams about wearing Trump’s hind parts as a hat easily recognized that Trump made an orange-tinted fool of himself on the panel Wednesday, responding to Scott’s question with a Miss Millie “I’ve always been good to you people” rant, and then spending a large portion of the discussion proving his racism by calling Kamala Harris a DEI hire and whitesplaining to Black people that she isn’t really Black.

MORE: 5 Takeaways From Trump’s ‘Insulting’ NABJ Interview With Black Women Journalists

But conservative talking heads, including Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt and Sage Steele are claiming Scott was unprofessional, aggressive and just plain mean to Trump by — *checks notes* —repeating Trump’s own words back to him.

Let’s start with Steele. Y’all remember her right? She’s the ex-sports analyst who claimed people were calling her a “sellout” because she’s biracial when people actually call her a sellout because she joined Caucasian crybabies in whining about Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem; she suggested that sexual harassment and assault victims are responsible for their own attacks because of how they dress; she was super proud of basically being called a light-skinned Candace Owens; she whined about being inconvenienced by anti-Trump protesters while she was trying to catch a flight, and she has generally spent her entire broadcasting career serving as a POC mouthpiece for white fragility.

Steele also criticized sports journalist Jemele Hill for criticizing Trump, which is why it’s completely unsurprising that she’s calling Scott “unprofessional” for doing the same.

“Unprofessional. Petty. Totally uncalled for. Let’s put aside her role as a journalist for a moment and consider the human element of this — what a disgraceful way to start a conversation, much less such an important interview. She immediately set the tone in such a negative way, and ruined what could have been a productive conversation. Talk about a missed opportunity! So disappointing that she chose to handle it this way. This is yet another example of why Americans don’t & shouldn’t trust the media,” Steele tweeted.

Steele appears to be one of many people from the foreign lands of Mt. Delulu who live in a world where anyone in journalism has ever had a “productive conversation” with Donald Trump. It’s like she’s never seen a Trump interview and witnessed the way he bounces around from subject to subject, avoids hard questions by throwing a temper tantrum and attacking whoever asked them, and defaults to lobbing insults at everyone on his anti-Trump sh*t list. No president or ex-president in recent history has kept fact-checkers working overtime to keep up with the myriad of lies he persistently repeats —but, sure, the conversation wasn’t productive because Scott asked him about his clear and observable racism. (Mind you, Steele parted ways with ESPN last year, claiming the network was infringing on her First Amendment rights as a journalist. Too bad she can’t smell her own hypocrisy over Trump’s rust and spray tan-flavored farts.)

Scott wasn’t being “petty.” It would be “petty” if someone pointed out that Steele is also called a “sellout” because she gleefully lets weird white men pet her hair after asking if it’s real on live television.

Again, it isn’t just Steele who is proving direct questions from a Black journalist are enough to turn a conservative talking head from a pseudo-“facts over feelings” advocate into a truth-loathing snowflake. Journalist Hugh Hewitt — who served in the Reagan White House and, in 2016, declared that Trump did not have “the temperament to be president” — claimed he had “never seen a more unprofessional opening of an ‘interview’ than that offered by ABC’s Rachel Scott to former President Donald Trump.”

Sean Hannity — who recently showed his desperation to attack Harris by trying to resurrect the ghost of Republicans’ anti-Jeremiah Wright campaign during the Barack Obama years by reporting on a Black pastor at a church the vice president attends, Dr. Amos Brown, who rightfully said America is a racist country — whined that Scott “didn’t open with, ‘Mr. President, I hope you feel better after your assassination attempt,'” and instead “opened the question and answer session with several hostile allegations.”

First of all, why does Scott need to check up on Trump after his “assassination attempt” when Trump’s miraculously healed ear indicates he’s just fine? Secondly, Scott didn’t hit Trump with “several hostile allegations,” she questioned him about things he provably said and did.

Let’s just take a quick look at Scott’s question to Trump in its entirety:

“I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir. A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today. You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States; which is not true. You have told four congresswomen of color who are American citizens to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabid’ to describe Black district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a loser, saying the questions that they ask are ‘stupid’ and ‘racist.’ You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So my question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you: Why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”

So, where was the lie? Trump did tell Black and brown congresswomen to “go back where they came from,” despite them all being born and/or raised in America. He did meet with loud, proud and obnoxious white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. He was heavily involved in the “birther” movement against Obama, and he did try to resurrect the narrative against Haley. And everything Scott said Trump said about Black journalists and legal officials is true and easy to confirm through a simple Google search.

And Scott was “addressing the elephant in the room.” The entire controversy regarding Trump’s NABJ invite revolved around his past hostility to Black journalists and the demonstrable racism, sexism and bigotry he is known for. Why shouldn’t Scott have gotten that glaring issue out of the way at the start? Conservatives only get whiny about hard questions when they’re leveled against politicians they support. They call politicians on “the left” weak and whiny when they complain about the same treatment.

But Hannity essentially whitesplained that Black people should ignore Trump’s racism and focus on all that he has done for Black people. (The white savior complex is a hell of a drug, apparently.)

“Well, maybe if ABC was an honest network, and they had fair journalists, maybe President Trump’s real record with African Americans would be front and center, because he has a strong record,” Hannity said.

Maybe if Hannity was a real journalist — instead of one who once accidentally admitted on his show that he doesn’t vet the information he broadcasts —he wouldn’t need to be so vague about Trump’s “record with African Americans.” But he does need to be vague, because once that often repeated claim that Trump has done so much for Black people—which largely revolves around Trump’s misleading claim that Black unemployment fell to record lows under his watch—it fails to hold up under scrutiny since, factually, Black unemployment was even lower under President Joe Biden .

But I’m getting off topic. Here’s a final point:

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that Scott was being “unprofessional” with her opening question to Trump. Why is this standard of decorum being applied to everyone around Trump, but not to Trump himself? There has scarcely been a single day during Trump’s time in politics where he wasn’t making lewd, boorish, bigoted and otherwise inappropriate public remarks about those who oppose him. He once responded to a female journalist’s accusatory line of questioning by publicly referencing her menstrual cycle. (I mean, it was Megyn Kelly’s racist ass, but still.) He has made insulting remarks about the appearances of female candidates who ran against him during every campaign he has run. He responds to judges’ gag orders by defiantly attacking, threatening and even doxxing prosecutors who brought cases against him.

Trump is the living embodiment of all that is “unprofessional” —but he’s a white man, not a Black woman, and, in all honesty, that’s all it really takes for white conservatives to remain blind to his behavior.

SEE ALSO:

Donald Trump’s Disastrous NABJ Appearance Proves Why He Never Should Have Been Invited In The First Place

NABJ Leader Defends Inviting Trump To Black Journalists Convention Amid Growing Outrage

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