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Former President Donald Trump used his turn before the nation’s largest professional association of Black journalists to question his White House rival’s racial identity this fall, telling a shocked National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago that vice president President Kamala Harris “happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black.
It took 10 consecutive days for Trump to face the first woman and the first incumbent of Black and Indian-American descent to openly question his origins.
“I don’t know. Is she Indian or black? Trump said, raising questions that echoed the former president’s persistent and discredited questions about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace. “I respect either of them, but she obviously doesn’t. does, because she was Indian the whole time and then all of a sudden she turned a corner and went, she became a person of color.”
Harris has always identified as the product of a multicultural family, born to Jamaican and Indian immigrants. His single mother, a Hindu adherent, embraced black culture. Harris went on to attend Howard University, a historically black university, where she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., one of the nation’s most prominent historically black Greek-letter organizations. She is scheduled to speak to a black Greek-letter organization on Wednesday in Houston.
“Today’s speech is simply a snapshot of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies throughout the campaign,” Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement.
Trump’s trolling was as ugly as ever, but it wasn’t surprising. This kind of attack on red meat is what has driven his campaigns since the early days of 2015, when he relied on racially charged rhetoric to incite his white nationalist base. That propelled him back into the headlines after a solid week in which Harris’ replacement of Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket paid him daily dividends of good headlines and better fundraising. And despite Trump’s insistence that his third White House run would be an appeal to all Americans, he couldn’t help but tip that Harris only got her current position because she checked the diversity and inclusion boxes.
At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the comment. “What you just read to me is repulsive. It’s an insult. No one has the right to tell someone who they are, how they identify,” she said from the meeting room podium.
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Trump, who has never shied away from attacking racial wounds, was also asked what he meant by once again referring to job opportunities as “black jobs.” He said many in attendance lost their jobs due to the cost of immigrants coming into the United States to steal their jobs. He said a second Trump term would “stop people from invading our country.” He then noted that “a lot of journalists in this room are black.”
The comments came a day after Trump suggested that Harris should never win the White House. “She will be like a toy,” Trump counted Laura Ingraham of Fox News. “They look at her and say, ‘We can’t believe we were so lucky.’ They will step on it.
Trump then looked directly into the camera and said, “And I don’t want to say why. But a lot of people understand that.”
(The Trump campaign has denied any sexist or racist reasons.)
Trump’s advisers tried to portray his efforts to win over black voters as sincere. While Democrats have enjoyed a consistent and perhaps absolute advantage over black voters since the Civil Rights Movement, Trump-supporting Republicans have seen cracks in that coalition they hoped to exploit. Yet Trump’s rhetoric combined with the denigration of Harris’ elevation as little more than a “DEI choice” does little to make these realignments a reality.
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The interrogation on Wednesday afternoon got off to a rocky start. ABC News’ Rachel Scott confronted Trump with his history of questionable decisions, including spreading doubt about the birthplaces of Obama and the former Nikki Haley, telling four US congresswomen to go back to where they came from, dining with white supremacists and describing black prosecutors as animals. “Why should black voters trust you after using language like that?” Scott said, sitting a few feet away from the president. Trump immediately attacked Scott’s integrity and professionalism. “Are you with ABC? Because I think they are a fake news network, a terrible network.”
It was precisely the antagonism that Trump sought. Even before launching into his diatribe about his greatest hits of white grievance and racial resentment, Trump set the tone by complaining that neither Biden nor Harris were on stage. “You invited me under a false pretense,” Trump complained, suggesting that Harris would participate via Zoom. “I think it’s a shame.”
Trump’s display in Chicago and his efforts to make the afternoon hostile fit with his general MO. But it signals how difficult the next three months could be if it remains on this same trajectory and tone.
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