A top Comcast executive, David Cohen, was in Oregon on Monday to tout the company's latest expansion of its Internet Essentials program - a service that offers online access to those who could not otherwise afford it.

Originally offered to low-income families, Comcast's $10 monthly service (downloads up to 15 megabits per second) is now also available to people receiving federal housing assistance, low-income veterans and to seniors in some places (though not in Oregon.)

Comcast is the nation's dominant cable and internet provider, with 600,000 subscribers in Oregon and Southwest Washington. And even as Cohen was touting the service to a group of veterans in Beaverton, President Donald Trump was on Twitter attacking the company for alleged antitrust violations.

Comcast, whose networks feature Trump critics on MSNBC and "Saturday Night Live," is just the latest media target of the president. On Monday, Trump appeared to be parroting complaints from the American Cable Association, a group of smaller cable operators who allege Comcast has made it difficult or expensive for them to access Comcast's own entertainment networks.

During his visit, Cohen - a veteran political operative in Comcast's hometown of Philadelphia - took a few minutes to speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive. He addressed the president's critique, competition from video streaming services and fast 5G wireless technology, and why a self-described "white Jewish guy" is serving as Comcast's chief diversity officer.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity

Q: Tell me a little bit about why you're in Oregon today and Internet Essentials

A: I think you know the Internet Essentials program. We launched it in 2011. It was targeted mostly to families with school-aged children, with eligibility initially limited to families eligible to participate in the national school lunch program. Seven years later, we've signed up more than 6 million low-income Americans to internet at home, a million and a half families, exceeding all expectations, including our own.

This year we decided we're in Portland to announce, on Veterans Day (observed) that we are expanding the program to cover low-income veterans. We estimate that there are a million low-income veterans nationally who could benefit from this expansion of eligibility, and about 26,000 of them live in the state of Oregon. So it's a very large expansion of eligibility and we think targeted to a population that could really benefit from home internet access.

Q: As I'm sure you know, Internet Essentials was originally a condition of the NBC-Comcast merger back in 2011. You probably saw the president's tweet today that alleged anticompetitive practices at Comcast, based on concerns from the American Cable Association. Do you have thoughts on the president's tweet?

A: Excuse me for being slightly picky on this, but Internet Essentials was not a condition of the deal. It was a voluntary commitment that we made for consideration of the deal. The voluntary commitment that we made was for three years. We are now more than four years past the expiration of any obligation that we have whatsoever to offer this program.

All I'll say about today's news is, let's understand ACA was against our NBC-Universal Deal.... They have their own agenda which has nothing to do with antitrust policy. It has to do with commercial practices and the marketplace and they will do anything that they can to try and get leverage in the marketplace.

Q: What's the president up to today, then?

A: As a practice I do not comment on the president's tweets, whether they relate to Comcast, to me, or to anyone else. I think you have to ask the White House what the president was up to. We're not concerned with the ACA letter to the Justice Department. We are very comfortable with our practices.

Q: I gather that you're here today, at least in part, in your role as Comcast's chief diversity officer.

A: I believe there's a very significant diversity and inclusion impact to Internet Essentials. Because the basic thrust of Internet Essentials is to level the playing field. Level the playing field for education, level the playing field for vocational opportunities.

When you look at the digital divide, the dirty little secret is that the people who are without internet access are disproportionately poor and they are disproportionately people of color. The more work we do to close the digital divide, we are having a diversity and inclusion impact.

Q: We have a robust tech community here in Oregon. Diversity is very much on people's minds. I do wonder, for a company that has a chief diversity officer - does it make sense for that person to be a white guy from New Jersey?

A: A white Jewish guy. I get that question. I'll tell you the answer, which is that I have a unique passion around diversity and inclusion. I've come to it over the course of my career and quite frankly there are things I can say and do that an African-American woman might not be able to get away with.

Q: Give me an example.

A: I can call people out. I can call people out for things they do within the company that, if we had an African-American chief diversity officer, people would say, well, she's a woman, or she's African-American. That's why she's doing that.

But when I say, as I have said, that half of the workforce in America is women, and I don't understand half of our leadership should not be female, I'm obviously not doing that because I'm a woman who wants to benefit from having half of our leadership in our company being female. I'm doing it because I believe in it. I can set an example that is a unique example as a white male in this space.

Q: We all think of Comcast as our cable company. Obviously the model is changing. People are getting their video, their entertainment from other sources. What is Comcast becoming? How is it going to adapt?

A: We're not your mother's cable company anymore. When you want cable service, we don't send somebody to your house with a big drill to put a hole in the wall and run a coax cable through and screw it into the back of your TV.

Broadband is a much more significant part of our business today than video. I'll also note that with the acquisition of (British satellite TV company) Sky, we now have 195,000 employees. Twenty-five percent of our revenues are international. I think we are right now the largest media company in the world.

In terms of the trends around the way people watch video, we have not stood still while that has happened. We've put Netflix on our X1 platform (Comcast's main video box). We have Pandora on the X1 platform. We have YouTube on the X1 platform. We have stated our intention to be a conglomeration of content.

Q: You have had one major competitive advantage for many years: you're in so many homes because you did drill holes in the walls a generation ago and you do have cable running to and inside homes. If we move to a future where wireless provides a plausible alternative for home internet connection, for broadband, how does Comcast respond to that?

A: We think we're going to do a very good job competing against 5G. Remember, 5G in most of the spectrums doesn't go through walls and windows. So there are some real technological limitations.

I, by the way, don't think our competitive advantage has much to do with the fact that we drill holes in people's walls. I think it's more the investment we that made in our (physical) plant and infrastructure.

We made the announcement less than a month ago that we've now rolled 1 gig service out to our entire footprint. Note the way we roll that out as compared to other competitors: We roll it out to everyone. We don't cherry pick neighborhoods. We don't cherry pick high-income customers.

We now have the largest 1 gig network in the United States and that's going to give us a big competitive advantage because, at least in its current engineering iteration, 5G is not 1 gig.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that Comcast's low-cost Internet Essentials program is not available to seniors in Oregon.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699