Trump to be endorsed by African-American pastors
Donald Trump, seeking to broaden his political appeal, will claim the endorsement of "100 African-American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders" next week, his campaign says.
The Republican front-runner will meet privately with the African-American pastors at Trump Tower in New York City before holding a news conference at 1 p.m. ET on Monday, according to the campaign schedule.
The Trump campaign did not release the names of the endorsers.
Meanwhile, another group of more than 100 African-American pastors and other religious leaders is asking the Trump backers to reconsider.
In an open letter for Ebony magazine, the counter-group said that "Trump’s racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric should give those charged with the care of the spirits and souls of Black people great pause."
The endorsements would come a little more than a week after Trump stirred racial controversies.
He cheered a crowd's physical ejection of a Black Lives Matter protester from an event in Birmingham, Alabama, saying the man might have deserved to be "roughed up."
And Trump retweeted an image of fake, racially-charged crime figures that attribute far more black-on-white murders to blacks than FBI crime statistics show actually happen.