Brown, Zoldan met with Trump on Tuesday

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

NFL legend Jim Brown said he didn’t know what to think heading into a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss issues facing the black community.

But Brown said after the meeting, “This is the best I’ve felt in a long time about what’s going on in this country.”

In an exclusive interview Wednesday with The Vindicator, Brown said before the meeting, “I knew he was different. I knew that he was a rational person to some degree.” After a laugh, Brown said, “That’s the way I have to put it. He woke up America. Many people thought he would not be president.”

But Trump displayed “the energy and the bravado to make things happen,” Brown said of his Tuesday meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan. That meeting also included football greats Curtis Martin and Ray Lewis as well as Bruce Zoldan, chief executive officer of B.J. Alan Co. of Youngstown and a longtime friend of Brown’s.

“He was interested and very motivated by what we discussed,” Brown said of Trump.

The discussion, Brown said, focused on his Amer-I-Can outreach program that teaches life skills and personal responsibility to young people in inner-city neighborhoods.

“The country needs programs that focus on jobs and life training,” he said. “What we were espousing will help. We were trying to be good Americans.”

The program’s goal is to help enable individuals to meet their academic potential, to conform their behavior to acceptable society standards, and to improve the quality of their lives by equipping them with the critical life management skills to confidently and successfully contribute to society, according to its website.

Brown, a longtime civil-rights activist who backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, said he was concerned about having access to Trump.

But after receiving a great deal of enthusiasm and support for his program, Brown said, “I have access to the next president of the United States. I can take programs to him that I support, and we can make those things happen. It’s a privilege. I’m happy about the situation that we’re in at this particular point. The die is cast and [Trump] can call upon entities he feels are helpful to him and we’re one of them.”

Zoldan, who joined Brown in the meeting with Trump, said the get-together was facilitated through the Rev. Darrell Scott, a Cleveland Heights pastor and Trump friend, and U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce of Russell, R-14th, at a Nov. 22 charity event in Cleveland.

“We reached out and we didn’t think we’d get to see [Trump] so quickly,” Zoldan said.

Helping the process is Youngstown native Omarosa Manigault, a Trump adviser, who sat in on the Tuesday meeting, Zoldan said.

Trump “has a close Youngstown connection sitting next to him at all the meetings, and that’s Omarosa,” Zoldan said. “She has a very, very close relationship with President-elect Trump.”

Trump plans to bring Brown, Martin, Lewis and Zoldan, along with others at Tuesday’s meeting, to get together in Washington, D.C., shortly after he is sworn in as president to talk about expanding Amer-I-Can nationally, Zoldan said.

Jim Brown played as a star fullback for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965 before launching a career in acting.