As many on the Left continue to express their outrage and upset over President Donald Trump’s criticism of Al Sharpton on Monday — not to mention his comments about Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) recently — the president met with African-American pastors and black community leaders.

Related: Trump Calls the Bluff of Democrat Cummings

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Trump said he was “looking forward” to the meeting on Twitter.

No reporters were invited to the event.

After the meeting, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, and Pastor Bill Owens spoke to the media at the White House.

King told reporters who asked about the meeting that she had a picture of Al Sharpton and also Rev. Jesse Jackson with Trump.

Related: Trump Goes After ‘Con Man’ Sharpton

“At one time in their lives, they highly regarded the president,” King said. “And so I’m thinking about a Scripture: ‘If it had been my enemy, I could have understood, I could have known what to do, but you were my friends and my brothers.’”

King tweeted out a picture of her and Sharpton and also her and Trump after the meeting.

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“When your friends lie, who needs enemies?” she asked.

King, a civil rights leader and a pro-life activist, said she would continue her cordial relationship with the president and pray with him about the state of the country.

“The babies in the womb, the sick and poor and elderly, are being blessed. We have an opportunity to continue to be blessed, and we have a president’s who’s listening,” King told the media.

“And I was glad to pray with him today.”

The president of the Coalition of African American Pastors, Bill Owens, said he found it “hard to believe” that the president was racist, after speaking with Trump for about two hours about issues affecting the black community.

Will the media acknowledge that black pastors and community leaders not only met with Donald Trump on the same day — but also said basically the same thing about the “Reverend” Sharpton?

“This country needs healing,” Owens said. “There’s so much division in America along racial lines.”

When asked if he thought Trump was stoking racism by using words like “infestation” to describe the city of Baltimore, Maryland, Owens replied, “Well, those are his words. I don’t want to second-guess what he says, because I hear a lot of things.”

“I see also people pandering to black people, to get them on board with some of their agenda,” Owens added.

Agendas indeed. Sharpton, as Trump noted in his Monday tweet, had previously had a friendly relationship with the president for many years.

“Al Sharpton would always ask me to go to his events,” Trump wrote. “He would say, ‘It’s a personal favor to me.’ Seldom, but sometimes, I would go. It was fine. He came to my office in T.T. during the presidential campaign to apologize for the way he was talking about me. Just a con man at work!”

The media will no doubt continue to play up the friction between the president and Al Sharpton.

But will they acknowledge that black pastors and community leaders not only met with Donald Trump on the same day — but also said basically the same thing about the “Reverend” Sharpton?

This piece originally appeared in The Political Insider and is used by permission.

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