Donald Trump talks with reporters while surrounded by a group of African-American religious leaders in New York on Nov. 30, 2015. Black pastors demand apology from Donald Trump

Instead of endorsements, many black pastors issued Donald Trump demands for an apology for his treatment of racial minorities at a closed-door meeting at Trump Tower in New York on Monday.

The demands, part of an hours-long meeting with dozens of black faith leaders that has been mired in controversy since it was announced on Wednesday, come after many leaders came under fire for meeting with Trump and after his campaign canceled the public portion of the event. But Trump, rarely one to avoid news cameras, held an impromptu press conference anyways and described the meeting as full of “love.”


“It went longer only because of the love. It didn't go longer for other reasons,” Trump said of the two-and-a-half hour session. “There were unbelievable solutions, I think, to problems that we will solve that other people won’t be able to solve.”

But there were also disagreements. During the meeting, pastors demanded Trump apologize not only to the black community, but also to Mexicans for his inflammatory rhetoric, according to Bishop Orrin Pullings, a Richmond, Virginia-based pastor.

“Our community really wants him to be sensitive with the way he handles people and they feel he’s insensitive,” said Pullings. “We told him that you are insensitive in appearance to our community and that’s not a good position. He listened to us and you know, I think Donald Trump is a very good listener.”

But others advised Trump against backing down, according to Pullings. “Another crowd said, ‘No you should never apologize. You’re ahead in the polls now because of your big mouth … You start apologizing, you’ve got to keep apologizing.’”

Pullings said Trump remained noncommittal, which he took as a sign that the mogul will not be issuing an apology any time soon. “It’s probably out of the question.”

In Trump’s account of the meeting, pastors did not ask him to tone down his rhetoric. “The tone has taken me to first position in every single poll,” he told reporters afterward. “The beautiful thing about the meeting is they didn’t ask me to change the tone.”

The back-and-forth echoes a similar debate that emerged among evangelical leaders at a similar meeting at Trump Tower in September. At that meeting, which included evangelical leaders of all races, several attendees challenged Trump on his habit of personally attacking critics and rivals and asked him to tone down his rhetoric while others defended Trump’s bombast. The September meeting concluded with those gathered laying hands on Trump and praying over him.

Monday’s meeting was held under more contentious circumstances, and while it opened and closed with prayer, there was no laying on of hands.

Trump has come under fire in the past week for condoning the rough treatment of a Black Lives Matter protester by his white supporters at a campaign rally in Alabama and for tweeting a chart with made-up statistics overstating the percentage of white murder victims killed by blacks.

On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign initially announced the meeting with 100 black pastors and a press conference at which the pastors were to endorse the mogul. But backlash built quickly as other black faith leaders condemned Trump — including in an open letter published by Ebony Magazine.

And on Sunday, Trump’s campaign canceled the open-press portion of the event, writing instead that it expected some pastors to issue endorsements after Monday’s closed-door meeting.

Trump said Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he believed the Black Lives Matter movement had pressured black clergy to withhold their endorsements of him. "It gets publicity — unfortunately, as everything I do gets publicity — and probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them up and said: 'You shouldn't be meeting with Trump because he believes that all lives matter,'" he said.

According to Pullings, when Trump began to defend the treatment of the Black Lives Matter protester by explaining that there were 10,000 people at the rally and he did not know the race of the man, he was interrupted by Maryland-based Bishop Michael Freeman, who told him, “I have 10,00 members. If someone yells out in my crowd I don’t have them thrown out.”

Pastors also criticized Trump’s mocking impression of a New York Times reporter’s physical handicap. Though Trump and the reporter have met on several occasion and he prefaced his impression by saying, “You ought to see this guy,” Trump maintains he does not know what the reporter looks like.