NEW YORK (AP) — Dozens of black pastors pressed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday to address what some called his use of racially charged rhetoric, with several describing a meeting that became tense at times as attendees raised concerns about his blunt language. 
 
 Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, talks with reporters while surrounded by a group of African-American religious leaders in New York, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Trump met with a coalition... (Associated Press) 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump works the crowd at the conclusion of his second campaign visit to Georgia at the Macon Centreplex Coliseum while a member of the crowd holds up the former... (Associated Press) 
 
 Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, talks to Pastor Darrell Scott while surrounded by reporters in New York, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Trump met with a coalition of 100 African-American... (Associated Press) 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, foreground center, stands in the middle of a media crush in the Trump Tower lobby in New York, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015. Trump met with a coalition of 100... (Associated Press) 
 
 While some left the gathering at Trump's skyscraper in midtown Manhattan with hopes their message had resonated, Trump said afterward he had no plans to change his approach, which he said had taken him to "first position in every single poll." 
 
 "The beautiful thing about the meeting is that they didn't really ask me to change the tone," Trump said. "I think they really want to see victory, because ultimately it is about, we want to win and we want to win together." 
 
 At a rally later Monday in Macon, Georgia, Trump told a nearly all-white audience of about 5,000 that the meeting was "inspiring" and "unbelievable." 
 
 "It was a really terrific day," he said. 
 
 But several pastors who met in New York with the billionaire real estate mogul, who has held a consistent lead in preference polls of GOP voters for several months due in large part to his aggressive style of campaigning, said the session was a bit more complicated. 
 
 Bishop George Bloomer, who traveled to the gathering from North Carolina, said he arrived in New York with concerns about "the racial comments that have been made and the insensitive comments that have been made," including an incident earlier this month in which a black protester was roughed up by Trump supporters at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama. 
 
 Trump said after the incident, "Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing." 
 
 "I asked him: 'Are you a racist? People are saying that about you,'" Bloomer said. "If you are seeking the African-American community to support you, at the least, you're not helping with these kind of things that are going on." 
 
 Bloomer said he told Trump that "if he wants to have our ear as a community, to at least tone down the rhetoric some kind of way, tone it down. And he said that he would." 
 
 Pastor Al Morgan of Launch Ministries in Raleigh, North Carolina, said part of the group's discussion focused on whether Trump should lighten up a bit. 
 
 "What he said was that he would take that into consideration," Morgan said. "So the thing was trying to be who he is, so you have to remain true to yourself. And, in his defense, that's gotten him where he is. So the thing is, how do you convey a person's heart with their personality? That's the dilemma." 
 
 Trump is seeking to replace President Barack Obama, who won two terms in the White House by bringing together a coalition of young people, single women and black and Hispanic voters. 
 
 Democrats maintain an enormous edge with African-American voters, with Republican presidential candidates faring poorly among minorities in the past two elections. In 2012, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks, 93 percent of black voters backed Obama. In 2008, the number was 95 percent. 
 
 But Trump has been courting the support of evangelical black clergy members and other African-American leaders as he works to broaden his appeal in a crowded Republican field. 
 
 In Georgia, radio host and failed 2012 presidential hopeful Herman Cain was among those who introduced Trump. Cain was the lone major black Republican candidate four years ago. Trump also interrupted his own 75-minute speech to bring another black Georgia Republican to the microphone. Bruce LeVell, who has served as party chairman in suburban Atlanta's Gwinett County, announced his endorsement, drawing roars from Trump's backers. 
 
 Monday's meeting with the pastors was originally promoted by the campaign as an endorsement event, in which he would receive the backing of 100 black evangelical and religious leaders. 
 
 But many of those invited to the meet-and-greet objected to that description, saying they accepted the invitation only because they wanted to challenge Trump about what he's said as a candidate. 
 
 Trump kicked off his campaign with a speech in which he said some Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals, and recently drew criticism for retweeting an image of inaccurate statistics that vastly overrepresented the number of whites killed by blacks, among other errors. 
 
 In a letter published by Ebony magazine, more than 100 black religious leaders wrote that "Trump's racially inaccurate, insensitive and incendiary rhetoric should give those charged with the care of the spirits and souls of black people great pause." 
 
 They also expressed concern that Monday's gathering would "give Trump the appearance of legitimacy among those who follow your leadership and respect your position as clergy." 
 
 Pastor Victor Couzens, from Cincinnati, Ohio, said he nonetheless felt an obligation to attend the meeting to hear what Trump had to say. 
 
 "It's very unfortunate the way he has talked to not just the African-American community, but things he's said about women and Mexicans and Muslims," Couzens said. "But what's more discouraging than the things that he has said is the fact that in the face of him saying all of these things, he continues to surge in the polls." 
 
 And some attendees emerged expressing full-throated support for Trump. 
 
 "What we were able to do today was allow people to see his heart for themselves and to make up their own minds about him," said Darrell Scott, the senior pastor of New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who helped to organize the meeting. "They find out that he's not the person that the media has depicted him to be." 
 
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 Associated Press reporter Bill Barrow contributed from Macon, Georgia. 
 
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 Follow Jill Colvin on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/colvinj ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201511/3342/1155968404_4638251377001_Donald-and-pastors-.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 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.” 
 
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 “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. ||||| Getty Trump abruptly cancels black clergy press conference 
 
 After prematurely announcing the endorsements of 100 black pastors -- prompting several to protest they were not, in fact, supporters – Donald Trump’s campaign abruptly cancelled a press conference with the group scheduled for Monday afternoon at Trump Tower. 
 
 Trump’s press secretary Hope Hicks informed reporters of the change of plans in an email Sunday afternoon. 
 
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 “On Monday, Mr. Trump will host an informational meet and greet with many members of the Coalition of African American Ministers. This is not a press event, but a private meeting, after which, a number of attendees are expected to endorse Mr. Trump’s campaign for President. This is closed to press and therefore no media credentials will be provided,” she wrote. 
 
 The botched endorsement rollout represents an embarrassing setback for a campaign struggling to combat the perception that its candidate is racially divisive. 
 
 The cancellation comes on the heels of an incident last weekend in which a Black Lives Matter protester was manhandled at a campaign rally in Alabama. Trump responded to the incident by suggesting “Maybe he should have been roughed up” and later tweeted a chart that featured a menacing depiction of a black gunman and statistics that overstated the percentage of white murder victims killed by blacks. 
 
 
 
 Ohio pastor Darrell Scott, Trump’s unofficial liaison to the black evangelical community and an organizer of Monday’s meeting, said those incidents have intensified scrutiny of black faith leaders who may otherwise support Trump. He chalked up the premature announcement of endorsements and subsequent cancellation of the press conference to a “miscommunication” with Trump’s campaign staff. 
 
 “I accept part of the blame for that,” he said. 
 
 According to a Trump insider who was not authorized to speak on the record, a group of about 40 pastors was prepared to endorse the candidate following Monday’s meeting but the final number of invitees swelled to over 100. Faith leaders who joined after the initial group were less committed to endorsing Trump – and some of those invited actually opposed his candidacy. Finding themselves under fire within black religious circles, several came out to say they do not plan to endorse him. 
 
 Others signaled privately that they will not make a final decision before meeting with the candidate. “They have an obligation to their people to meet with him first so they can have the same firsthand relationship with his views,” said the Trump insider. “We still firmly believe that this is history in the making. I don’t believe there’s ever been a Republican candidate or president who’s sat down with 100 black evangelical preachers.” 
 
 The campaign originally announced the press conference in a press release on Wednesday, writing, “Trump will be joined by a coalition of 100 African American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders who will endorse the GOP front-runner after a private meeting at Trump Tower.” 
 
 But some of those listed as invitees quickly took to social media to condemn the billionaire businessman. Detroit pastor Corletta Vaughn called Trump “an insult and embarrassment” in a Wednesday Facebook post. 
 
 On Friday, Los Angeles-based Bishop Clarence McClendon announced that he would not attend the meeting, writing on Facebook, “The meeting was presented not as a meeting to endorse but as a meeting to engage in dialogue.” Bishop Paul Morton of Atlanta tweeted, “I was asked 2 meet with Mr. Trump too but I refused because until he learns how to respect people you can't represent me thru my endorsement.” 
 
 Also on Friday, over 100 black religious readers condemned Trump in an open letter published by Ebony Magazine, calling on black clergy preparing to endorse him to reconsider their support. 
 
 Amid the furor, the campaign canceled the public portion of the event. The private meeting will go forward as planned, and Scott said that the guest list has continued to grow in recent days. Even as some pastors drop out, he said he expects the total attendance to exceed 100. “Ever since this controversy came out of this meeting, more pastors have contacted me seeking admission,” he said. 
 
 It is not clear how many endorsements Trump will receive following the meeting. 
 
 Scott said that the criticism he and other black pastors have faced from for dealing with Trump has been withering. 
 
 “We’ve been called Uncle Toms, sellouts, coons … We have preachers calling us ‘prostitutes on a pole,’” he lamented, referring to an epithet leveled by one Baltimore minister. “If Donald Trump said that, the entire nation would be in an uproar.”
– Donald Trump says a meeting with dozens of black pastors at Trump Tower on Monday was "amazing," "inspiring," and "unbelievable"—but he has no intention of changing his campaign's tone. His campaign initially said the summit would be followed by public endorsements from more than 100 clergy members, though it later canceled the public part of the meeting and pastors say there were plenty of disagreements during the talk, Politico reports. "I asked him: 'Are you a racist?'" Bishop George Bloomer tells the AP. "People are saying that about you," Bloomer says he told Trump. "If you are seeking the African-American community to support you, at the least, you're not helping with these kind of things that are going on." Clergy members say the roughing up of a Black Lives Matter protester at a Trump rally was discussed, as was Trump's rhetoric on immigration. Afterward, Trump said, "The beautiful thing about the meeting is they didn't ask me to change the tone," per Politico. Some attendees say he did agree to soften his tone somewhat, though the AP reports that at a Monday evening rally in Macon, Ga., where he was introduced by Herman Cain, Trump repeated the positions on immigration that the pastors had been concerned about. But he has adopted a "newly conciliatory tone on racial matters," according to the New York Times: Trump and the clergy members who met with him were strongly criticized by the Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday, and Trump's only response in a Times interview was, "Deep down inside, Al likes me a lot."