A recent Harlem lunch meeting with Pete Buttigieg wowed Rev. Al Sharpton enough that he's convinced Americans will eventually elect an openly gay president, he said Sunday.

During an impromptu interview in a Washington, D.C. restaurant, Sharpton praised the South Bend, Indiana mayor as a straight-shooter whose youth and inexperience shouldn't count against him.

'I felt he was overall more impressive than I thought he would be,' Sharpton said, while cautioning that he's not ready to endorse any of the 22 Democrats who have lined up for a shot at unseating President Donald Trump.

With a cigar smoldering and a teacup absorbing an endless series of stevia packets, Sharpton waxed about Buttigieg's 'refreshing' authenticity, Trump's looming battles with Congress, and criminal justice reform policies that have become his latest calling card.

'I think we also are in the middle of a potential constitutional crisis with this whole showdown with the Congress and the president,' he said, unprompted, declaring that Trump 'does not operate like he's a coequal to the legislature.'

Rev. Al Sharpton sat with DailyMail.com for an interview on Sunday at one of the few Washington restaurants that allows smoking; he spoke glowingly about Pete Buttigieg, blasted Donald Trump and advocated for letting non-violent convicts vote – until Paul Manafort's name entered the conversation

Buttigieg met with Sharpton for lunch at famed Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem on April 29; Sharpton praised him on Sunday as 'comfortable in his own skin,' and said he was 'impressed that he was pretty certain what he stood for [and] what he didn't. I did not feel he was patronizing'

Asked for three words that describe the commander-in-chief, Sharpton didn't skip a beat.

'Totally self-absorbed,' he said. 'I think he does not understand the office he holds.'

Sharpton, now 64, sought the same office in 2004, saying later that he did it mainly to raise the profile of social justice issues. And like Trump's inner circle, he had a reckoning over campaign finance violations. The Federal Election Commission fined the Sharpton campaign $285,000.

That was 17 years after the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape-hoax case, which has dogged him for decades. He had sided with a 15-year-old girl who, according to a grand jury, fabricated a story of racially motivated sexual assault at the hands of six white men, including police officers.

In 1994, amid his third U.S. Senate run, he infamously tried to flex his black-heritage muscle and stepped into a new controversy. 'We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it,' he told a college audience, according to the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

But by 2005 a fresh-eyed Sharpton was calling for unity between African-Americans and gay Americans, citing a growing number of AIDS cases among black women and condemning 'latent homophobia in our community.'

Today, with an MSNBC show and a kingmaker's pedestal for Democrats courting black voters, he has become a constant source of self-reinvention – and an inescapable agenda-setter for people of color.

And he's furious at Trump for wooing them with unemployment statistics that he says hide a disturbing national neglect.

Sharpton says President Trump is 'blowing smoke' on African-American unemployment because black Americans are nearly twice as likely to be out of work as whites

The current economic upswing has brought overall unemployment to a near-record low of 3.6 per cent, on a trend that started during the Obama years; but black unemployment is 6.7 per cent, a number that makes Sharpton see red

Trump spearheaded the First Step Act, a law with bipartisan support that has already prompted the release of more than 500 inmates who languished in prison for non-violent crimes; Matthew Charles is pictured at the White House, who was released from from federal prison after serving 20 years for selling crack cocaine; Sharpton isn't eager to give the White House any credit

At 3.6 per cent, Bureau of Labor Statistics data for April show an overall national unemployment rate that's a tiny fraction of the Obama administration's 9.9 per cent peak nine years ago.

Black unemployment has plummeted along roughly the same path, from 16.8 per cent to 6.7 per cent.

'It's not enough,' Sharpton said. 'He's still got the race – the race gap is still there. So to be doubly unemployed in a robust economy is not comforting to me.'

And amid some economists' insistence that Obama's economic policies started the U.S. economy barreling toward its current mark, he has decided Trump deserves no credit for helping blacks find work.

'I think he's blowing smoke,' he said.

Sharpton blew his own smoke, an Ashton cigar with the label peeled off, declining a waitress's offer to cut it for him as a hulking bodyguard watched within arm's reach.

He happily posed for a photograph but held the cigar near his lap.

'I don't want to be promoting tobacco,' Sharpton said, ignoring the remnants of his first half-hour of smoking in an ashtray right in front of him.

Sharpton is certain that part of the reason for America's unemployment race gap comes back to prisons, a source familiar with his thinking said Monday, even though the Pew Research Center has found that the difference between the number of black and white prisoners in the U.S. is shrinking every year.

He's looking for a candidate who will champion both prison reform and 'a new approach to bringing jobs back to inner cities,' the source said. And he's answering inevitable questions about who piques his interest.

Buttigieg 'seems to punch some of the right buttons,' the source added.

After last week's lunch meeting, Buttigieg told reporters that the pair talked about 'an agenda for black agenda that's going to be a very core part of my campaign, something that focuses on home ownership, entrepreneurship, health, education and criminal justice.'

Sharpton's National Action Network has become a must-visit organization for candidates hoping to court black voters, including African-Americans like California Sen. Kamala Harris (pictured) as well as liberal politicians who hope to appeal to people of color in primary elections

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Buttigieg, 37, is barely two years older than the U.S. Constitution's minimum age for taking the presidential baton. But Sharpton was quick on Sunday to compare him to John F. Kennedy, saying their ages on Inauguration Day would be less than four years apart.

'John Kennedy was in his early 40s. He's in his late 30s,' he said, adding that 'we elected a guy 43 years old in the middle of a Cold War and Cuba!'

Buttigieg's boy-next-door optics aside, Sharpton said the obvious difference between Jackie Kennedy and Buttigieg's husband, Chasten, is becoming less and less of an obstacle as gay rights are normalized in the U.S.

Asked if Americans will even elect an openly gay president, he responded: 'I think they will. Whether it's Pete, I don't know. But I think they will.'

'I was impressed that he was pretty certain what he stood for [and] what he didn't,' he said of the Indianan. 'I did not feel he was patronizing. He said things that he knew I may disagree with, and he was firm on things that he and I may agree with.'

'The most impressive thing about him is he seems comfortable in his own skin. You meet a lot of political people that you feel they're insecure or trying to mold themselves to what they think you like. He seems to be who he is. And I think that's impressive and refreshing.'

Sharpton and his National Action Network organizing platform are watching California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, both African-Americans, carefully, the source close to Sharpton said.

He's also keeping an eye out for a candidate to back if Democratic primary voters decide neither of them passes muster as a potential inheritor of Barack Obama's history-shaking 2008 moment.

'But in the absence of the perfect, Rev. Al will choose the good,' the source said. 'Even if it's someone who he crosses swords with on something big.'

Chasten Buttigieg (left) would become 'first gentleman' if his husband Pete (right) were to become president; Sharpton says Americans will send someone to the White House someday who is openly gay

Sharpton favors letting non-violent felons vote, along with people who are in jail awaiting trial but have not yet been convicted; the prospect of letting the disgraced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort cast a ballot, however, brought an 'I don't know'

Sharpton said he and Buttigieg disagree about one plank in his criminal justice platform: the thorny proposal, now law in two states, to allow prisoners to vote from behind bars.

'I feel that people that have been incarcerated for nonviolent crimes – not violent crimes – should not be disenfranchised,' he said, noting that Buttigieg 'says people incarcerated should not vote. We disagree on that.'

He insisted that 'those that are incarcerated waiting for trial,' who 'haven't been convicted of anything,' should have the same rights as anyone who can post bail.

The same rule should apply to those 'incarcerated for petty crimes,' he said, after working his way through a logical labyrinth that has gripped headlines as candidates stake out positions ranging from Buttigieg's caution to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' free-for-all.

Asked if disgraced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, serving a seven-year sentence for white-collar crimes, should be able to cast a ballot in 2020, he paused for three seconds – an eternity in Sharpton's rapid-fire, always-on style.

'I don't know,' mused Sharpton. 'I think it's got to be a thought-out process.'