Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the former president donald trump for repeatedly stating that he appeals to black voters because of his felony conviction, saying the Republican candidate’s racist efforts to reach black Americans are “insulting.”
Harris, the first Black American, South Asian and woman to be vice president, made the comments in an interview with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski that aired Monday. During the interview, Brzezinski asked the Democrat what he thought about the indicted former president’s attempt to connect with black voters through his legal struggles, as well as his oft-repeated claim that he can’t be racist because he has black friends. .
“Well, on the first point, regarding the second point, it is an insult,” Harris responded. “It is insulting for a number of reasons, including [that] he has reduced the entire population of people to a sum total of what is, in his opinion, who they are. And he is wrong, and he is wrong.”
Trump was sentenced last month on 34 criminal charges related to his secret trial, one of many cases in which the former president has been indicted, including charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost.
“I was indicted for nothing – for something that is nothing. … I was indicted a second time, a third time and a fourth time,” Trump said in February at the Black Conservative Federation Gala in South Carolina.
“And a lot of people said that’s why black people like me, because they’ve been seriously hurt and discriminated against. And they really saw me as if I was being discriminated against,” he continued. “It has been incredible. Possibly…maybe there is something there.”
The Republican candidate repeated the statement in an interview with Semafor published earlier this month, claiming that black voters told him “very clearly and clearly” that they “feel like similar things have happened to them.”
At the time of Trump’s comments in February, Biden’s campaign said the Republican “peddled racist tropes” that mocked black voters.
“This may be news for Trump, but promoting tired tropes, wannabe Jordans and photo t-shirts won’t win over black voters who have suffered from record unemployment and skyrocketing uninsured rates under his leadership,” Biden spokesperson , Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Trump is showing black voters exactly what he thinks of them – and his ideas for winning them over are as corny and racist as he is.”
Trump has a long history of racismhaving famously called out the Exonerated Five – the black and brown teenagers falsely accused of rape in New York – receive the death penalty in the 1980s. He also led the right-wing conspiracy that falsely accused former president Barack Obama of being born in Kenya and not the USA, and called white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, “very fine people.” Last month, a producer of Trump’s former reality show “The Apprentice” alleged that there is a recording of the then businessman using the N-word in reference to a black contestant.
“I have so many black friends that if I were racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anyone, and quickly. They wouldn’t be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist – and I’m not racist!” Trump told Semafor this montha statement he repeated many times, despite the reality that having black friends does not negate acts of racism.
Despite repeatedly denouncing the secret trial that made him the first US president to be convicted of a crime, Trump now proudly wears his guilty verdict with his 2024 campaign saying it has since received a large influx of contributions.
“Every time the radical left Democrats, the Marxists, the communists and the fascists accuse me, I consider it a great, great badge of honor,” Trump told a South Carolina audience in February. “Because I am being indicted by you, the American people. I am being indicted by you, black population. I’m being indicted by several different groups for sick people.”
On a Pew Research Center survey released last month18% of black respondents said they would vote for Trump – double the number who voted during the 2020 election. About 77% said they would vote for Biden and 65% said they believe Trump broke the law by trying to overturn the 2020 election.
A few days before the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections, Trump announced that he had selected his pick for vice president, although he did not reveal who he was. In between the list of potential candidates are two black Republicans, Senator Tim Scott (SC) and Representative Byron Donalds (Florida) – the latter who recently suggested that black Americans were better off under the racist Jim Crow era in America.
“I don’t know who he will choose. I try not to spend too much time thinking about how he thinks,” Harris said Monday. “But listen, I think it’s clear there is a litmus test. And he’s going to pick someone who will be more loyal to him than to his country… and he’s more likely to bring someone who will be a rubber stamp.”
