Why This Group of Black Faith Leaders Is Giving Trump a Failing Grade

WASHINGTON – Members of the African American Clergy are slamming President Donald Trump and on Monday gathered to give him a progress report. 
 
On the campaign trail, Trump famously posed the question to African American voters: "What do you have to lose?"

"What do we have to lose? Jobs and prosperity," Rev. Kip Bernard Banks said at Monday's news conference. 
 
He and about a dozen other faith leaders spoke on topics ranging from the economy and health care to criminal justice and race relations.

They say African-Americans are suffering considerably more now under Trump's leadership. 
 
"People living in poverty are losing. African Americans are losing," said Rev. Leslie Copeland Tune, director of the Ecumenical Poverty Initiative. 

“Poverty rates among African Americans and other people of color are consistently higher at every level than their white counterparts, whether its education, healthcare, criminal justice or tax reform,” she noted. “In every area of policy proposed thus far, it has a negative impact on African Americans and those living in poverty.”

Rev. Barbara Williams Skinner of the African American Clergy Network agreed.

“We are actually more concerned that America is in graver danger than even the Russian hacking of our election and other external threats,” she said.

“There is a danger of moral decay that comes to adding $52 billion to an already bloated defense budget and cutting that same amount from life sustaining programs for children, the elderly, the sick and what I call an escalated war against the poor,” she warned.
 
The African American Clergy is hoping to meet with Trump and members say they're in the process of drafting a letter to send to his office.