Trump Team Dumped Out Of Black Media Interview By Claiming Trump Too ‘Exhausted’ Per Playbook Sources

Politico sources said former President Donald Trump dumped out of talks for a Black media interview by having his staff claim he was too “exhausted” to do the interview — on the same podcast Vice President Kamala Harris just appeared on.

This week, Harris is on a Black media mini-blitz with extensive interviews on Roland Martin Unfiltered, The Shade Room, and an event with radio host Charlamagne Tha God.

Trump has been doing a blizzard of friendly interviews — with one notable exception — but backed out of talks to appear on The Shade Room by having aides claim he’s too tired these days. From Politico Playbook:

The Trump campaign had been in conversations for weeks with The Shade Room about a sit-down interview. The site, which draws an audience that is largely young and Black, hosted an interview with Harris just last week.

But as no interview materialized, Shade Room staff began feeling that feet were being dragged inside Trump’s campaign. No date was ever set, we’re told, but the intention was to try and work toward a sit-down.

In a conversation earlier this week, when describing why an interview hadn’t come together just yet, a Trump adviser told The Shade Room producers that Trump was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change” at any time, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

To make up for a lack of a Trump interview this close to the election, those two people say Trump-supporting rapper WAKA FLOCKA FLAME was offered up as an alternative.

The Trump campaign issued a denial via spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who told Politico she wasn’t part of the Shade Room talks, but insisted the exhaustion angle“is unequivocally false.”

In July, Trump made what has widely been seen as a trainwreck appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention, during which Trump falsely claimed Harris once identified exclusively as “Indian-Americian” until “all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

On Friday morning, Trump made an in-studio appearance on Fox News hours after his speech at the Al Smith Dinner.