Donald Trump has turned down an offer to speak at the NAACP’s national convention next week, the organization said on Tuesday night.
That makes him just the fourth presidential candidate since 1980 to skip the event, according to NBC News.
“The explanation given was that they’re holding their convention at the same time. We of course, are in Cincinnati, they are in Cleveland,” NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks said on CNN. “We were hoping that he would make the short trip from Cleveland to Cincinnati.”
The two cities are roughly 40 minutes apart by plane.
Trump himself has not yet publicly commented on the snub, but the NAACP released a statement on Facebook saying the Republican candidate missed a chance “to connect on issues that have dominated the national conversation in recent years.”
The organization wrote:
You can’t run for president and not talk about police misconduct and police brutality. You can’t run for president and not talk about this country’s civil rights agenda. This is an important moment, and our convention is an opportunity for anyone running for president to provide a window into not only their policies, but into their heart and character as a candidate.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will speak at the event on Monday.
“We look forward to hearing Secretary Clinton’s priorities and plan to advance our issues of social justice,” the organization said on Twitter.
Trump has been repeatedly accused of racism, particularly after he retweeted messages from white supremacists. Trump even shared a wildly inaccurate graphic that claimed 81 percent of all murders of white people were committed by blacks. In reality, FBI statistics showed that 82 percent of murders involving white victims were committed by whites.
Earlier this year, he condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his events, and this week he called the group “divisive” and “racist.” As a result, he has picked up almost no support from the African-American community, receiving just 1 percent of the black vote in a recent poll.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar,rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.
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