The White House is exploring plans to host multiple summits on race between prominent athletes and artists and President Donald Trump, according to the outside adviser spearheading the effort.

Cleveland pastor Darrell Scott, one of the president’s most prominent black allies, says the idea of bringing in artists and athletes to hash out their differences with Trump has gotten a boost from last week’s lovefest between the president and Kanye West. Scott is set to meet Thursday with Trump at the White House about the summit proposal.


The plans remain preliminary and no dates have been set, though Scott expressed confidence the summits would go forward and that Trump would attend.

“It’s going to be unscripted, unfiltered, blunt,” Scott said. “No topic is off the table.”

Scott — who works closely with Jared Kushner on prison reform and is spearheading a White House-backed plan to revitalize poor urban neighborhoods — is organizing the summit effort in conjunction with Andrew Giuliani, a top aide in the White House Office of Public Liaison who is also the son of former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

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Giuliani referred questions to the White House press office, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Organizers are considering holding an athletes summit sometime between the end of the NBA finals around mid-June and the beginning of NFL training camp in late July, Scott said. A separate summit for artists could happen even sooner.

Scott said the summits would be open to artists and athletes of all backgrounds and political persuasions. He added that “of course” West would be invited and that he was in the process of reaching out to the artist through an intermediary.

Trump praised West online last week after the artist tweeted: “You don’t have to agree with Trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother.”

Scott said former Cleveland Browns fullback Jim Brown, a Trump supporter, would be invited to the athletes summit, along with basketball Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes and boxer Evander Holyfield. Brown, Hayes and Holyfield did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Scott said he hopes interested parties will reach out to him about attending and speculated that many vocal critics of Trump would avoid the chance to engage directly with the president.

“A lot of people have spunk and courage on Twitter,” he said. “I wonder how many will actually show up.”

Trump has sparred with black leaders in Washington. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus protested his first State of the Union address earlier this year over his failure to condemn white nationalism during his campaign and as president, as well as his reported characterization of African countries as “shitholes” and his assertions that minorities live “in hell.”

Trump has repeatedly denied holding racist views, describing himself at times as “the least racist person.” His supporters have pointed to his decision to make his Mar-a-Lago club open to members of all races and religions while other private clubs in Palm Beach have restricted membership to white Christians.

Prior to the campaign, Trump made himself the foremost proponent of the racially charged — and false — theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In the 1970s, he became the face of the Trump family business’ response to Justice Department charges that it discriminated against black would-be tenants, which led to the Trumps submitting to consent decrees barring discriminatory practices.

Despite that history, Trump won a larger share of the black vote than Mitt Romney did, thanks largely to his campaign’s efforts to discourage black turnout by highlighting Hillary Clinton’s support for harsh criminal justice reform in the 1990s and the fact that, unlike Romney, he did not face a black opponent.

A Trump political adviser who was not authorized to speak on the record said it would be ill-advised to hold any such events ahead of the midterms. “Not recommended in the current divisive political environment,” the person said, citing the possibility that the summits could produce moments that would be used against Trump.

Yet Trump has experimented with televised dialogues, including a listening session on gun violence in February that included students and families from the Parkland, Florida, high school at which a gunman killed 17 people in February.

Scott organized a November 2015 meeting between Trump and black pastors at Trump Tower that lasted several hours. A planned post-meeting press conference was abruptly canceled.

Scott acknowledged that the summits have the potential to be explosive, but he said that was a good thing. “I want it to get heated. H however, I want it to stay respectful,” he said. “I don’t anticipate anybody throwing any blows.”

He said the goal of the summits would be to bring “understanding, a lessening of hostility, a truce, a peace accord.” He added: “This might be harder to do than the Korean talks.”

