December 1, 2015

Meet the “Harlem Hate Pastor” Who Just Met With Donald Trump

If you can believe it, James David Manning is even more inflammatory than the GOP candidate.

<a href=http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Harlem-Drummers/05e0a4f4a74e47b7ac804d1852d8df2b/2/0>Bebeto Matthews</a>/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Monday, Republican front-runner Donald Trump met with a group of African American pastors in Manhattan, after some confusion over whether all the participants would be endorsing him. Some black pastors who weren’t there were critical of the meeting—one referred to it as a “get-played moment”—but Trump insisted (of course) that the session went well. He also claimed that some of the participants did agree to endorse him.

Trump, who has made some unsavory statements about the black community, may not be a likely candidate for such endorsements. So who might these Trump-friendly pastors be? Meet Pastor James David Manning of the ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem.

Manning, who was at Trump’s summit, has a long record of outlandish, hateful, and nutty statements. His church once accused President Barack Obama of releasing “the homo demons on the black man.” He has vowed to die if that’s what it takes to expose Obama as the devil. He has asserted that Starbucks injects semen from gay men into its coffee. (Yes, really.) He chanted “oh faggots, oh faggots, please come out tonight” during a protest at his church last week.

As a bonus, here’s a video on Manning’s Facebook page of a man who claims that Planned Parenthood, and not Robert Dear (who is accused of killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic), practices terrorism every day.

On this Facebook page, Manning (proudly?) posted a news story reporting that “Harlem Hate Pastor James David Manning” was at the Trump meeting. It’s unclear whether Manning was one of the pastors who Trump says has agreed to endorse him. But there is evidence that Manning, who’s no stranger to extreme rhetoric, sure likes the GOP candidate whom Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently called “a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate