President Donald Trump has declined an invitation to address the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People next weekend in Baltimore, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.
“My understanding is that the invitation has been declined for this year,” Sanders told reporters at a briefing.
Trump also did not speak to the NAACP convention last year, citing scheduling conflicts with the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where he was formally nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.
Previous Republican presidential nominees regularly attended the annual meetings of the oldest civil rights organization in the country. Republican nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 both addressed the NAACP convention before losing to Obama in the general elections.
“We get the message loud and clear. The president’s decision today underscores the harsh fact: we have lost – we’ve lost the will of the current administration to listen to issues facing the black community,” NAACP Board Chairman Leon Russell said in a statement.
