Trump Gave Pastor Darrell Scott a CDC Seat on Tobacco. Black Lungs Are the Stake.

Let me tell you something about Darrell Scott that you won’t get from the press release. I know the man. I know some of his family. And a long time before his name showed up next to Donald Trump’s, it showed up next to mine — on the same side, working for the same thing. So when I talk about this CDC appointment, understand I’m not talking about a stranger. I’m talking about somebody I came up in the work with. That’s exactly why I’m going to tell it straight.

When nobody knew the name

Go back to the early days of the Obama run, when Barack Obama was still a long shot and half the country couldn’t pronounce his name. Cleveland threw one of the first big rallies of that campaign — thousands of people, a packed house over at Tri-C. I wasn’t in the crowd. I was on the crew that built it. And you don’t have to take my word for it — the campaign put that day on video. Watch it below.

A small group of us stood that whole thing up from nothing. We found the venue. We put the music together, pulled the choirs and the bands, lined up all the moving pieces it takes to make a room of thousands feel like church. And to do that kind of work, you need a place to work from. You need somebody to open a door.

One of the very first to open his door was Darrell Scott. He gave us his church. He let us set up shop in that building, work late into the night, print the posters, spread the plans across the tables and make it our headquarters. That’s not a small thing. When you’re building something for a candidate the establishment hasn’t blessed yet, the people who let you in the door early are the ones who believed before it was safe to believe. Scott was one of those people. For us. For Obama.

The church on the circuit

And it didn’t stop when the rally ended. Scott’s church stayed part of the work. We did events out of there. Governor Ted Strickland came through. I was on Scott’s radio program more than once. For a stretch, that man and that church were woven right into the Democratic organizing in this town.

So I’m not reading you a Wikipedia page. I watched New Spirit Revival Center go from our late-night poster shop to a real stop on the circuit. I broke bread with the man. That’s the Darrell Scott I knew.

So what happened?

And that’s the honest question sitting in the middle of this whole thing. I don’t know exactly where the line got crossed. I can’t tell you the day, the room, or the reason he went from opening his church for Obama to co-founding the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, standing on the stage at the Republican National Convention, and landing a spot on Trump’s transition team.

The Root reported back in 2016 that before all of that, Scott had spent years working to elect Democratic mayors right here in Cleveland. I lived a piece of that with him. So this wasn’t a man who was always on the other side. Something moved. People change teams — I’ve watched plenty do it — but a switch that hard, from that far, you notice.

Here’s what I’ll give him, and it’s the same thing I’d say to his face: the man understands loyalty as currency. He showed up early for Obama and got nothing but the work. He showed up early for Trump and got position. Trump said it himself when he announced the pick — “Pastor Darrell Scott has been with us from the very beginning.” That’s the whole transaction, out loud. You show up early, you stay, and when the door opens your name is on the list. Every operator in this town understands that game. The question was never whether loyalty earned him the seat. The question is what he does once he’s sitting in it.

Loyalty got him the chair. What he does with it will tell us who the chair was for.Kenn Dowell

What the seat actually is

Now here’s where I lean on the reporting, because Ron Calhoun at The Cleveland Observer did the homework and you should read his piece. On September 1, Trump announced on Truth Social that Scott would advise on tobacco health issues for the CDC’s Advisory Committee to the Director.

Read the fine print, though. That committee advises. It does not regulate a single cigarette, vape or nicotine product. It’s a voice at the table, not a hand on the lever. Most of its outside seats are supposed to go to people with real expertise — public health, epidemiology, biomedical research. Scott’s own church biography lists decades of ministry and anti-drug work, but no training in medicine or tobacco control. So it’s a chair with a lot of empty room around it. Room you can fill with substance, or room you can fill with nothing.

Why it lands on our block

And this is the part that should make every pastor, every mother, every brother on the corner sit up. In 2020, about 81 percent of Black adults who smoked used menthol cigarettes — against 34 percent of white adults who smoked, per the CDC data the Observer cited. That’s not an accident. That’s decades of the tobacco companies putting menthol on our billboards and in our corner stores.

Then in January 2025, Trump’s FDA pulled the proposed ban on menthol cigarettes. And the Associated Press reported the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health — the one Congress set aside $246 million for, the one that ran the campaign credited with helping a million people quit — got gutted to almost nobody after the health cuts. So the money’s on paper, the people who did the work are gone, and into that empty room steps an adviser from Cleveland Heights. Harm reduction for whom? For the lungs in Glenville, or for a balance sheet somewhere else?

Make the seat count

So here’s my word to Darrell Scott, from somebody who knew him when the only thing his loyalty bought him was a long night printing posters for a candidate nobody had crowned yet.

You’ve got a seat almost nobody from our side of town ever gets. Use it. Put menthol on the table at every meeting. Ask out loud where that $246 million went and who’s going to staff that office. Bring the church into the fight to help our uncles put the Newports down for good. Carry Cleveland’s numbers through that door with you. If “harm reduction” means getting Black folks off menthol, fight for it. If it means trading one habit for another sold by the same people, say no — and say it out loud, on the record, where I can hear it.

Because I remember the man who opened his doors when it wasn’t popular. I’m asking him to open one more. Loyalty got you the chair, Pastor. Now show us who the chair was for. We’re watching — and this time I’m watching as somebody who was there at the start.

This is my perspective, built on reporting by Ron Calhoun of The Cleveland Observer, “Trump names Cleveland Heights pastor for CDC role” (Sept. 24, 2026). The reporting is theirs; the opinion — and the history — is mine. Kenn Dowell is the founder and publisher of RealPower.TV and CEO of Strategic Resources Consulting. Join RealPower.TV to get every edition.