Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) drew attention to the “sad irony” in the previous President Donald Trump recent attacks on Vice President Kamala Harrisin which he questioned his black racial identity.
During an appearance on Wednesday on CNN’s “Laura Coates Live,” Warnock criticized Trump, who spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Chicago that day, for promoting “division and hatred” by falsely accusing Harris of not previously identifying as black.
“He doesn’t even recognize the sad irony of his comment,” said Warnock, who is black. “In truth, the story of Kamala Harris is an iteration of the American story. The diversity that is among us and often within us.”
“She literally carries it in her veins,” he continued later. “In that sense, he doesn’t know who we are.”
“If you don’t know us, you can’t represent us – you certainly can’t lead us.”
Between the several falsehoods that Trump spewed on stage during your controversial appearance at the NABJ convention, the former president implied that Harris had previously identified only as Indian.
“I knew [Harris] a lot of time indirectly, not very directly, and she was always of Indian heritage and was just promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black. And now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or black?
“She has always identified as a woman of color,” said Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
“I respect any of them, but she obviously doesn’t,” Trump continued. “I think someone should look into this.”
Harris is black and South Asian. She was born in California and is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.
The vice president, who attended a historically black university and is a member of a historically black sorority, always identified as a black woman.
People on X, formerly Twitter, have pointed out thatTrump’s remarks implied that someoneCan’t be both black and South Asian.
Others have called attention to the fact that attacks on Harris’s black racial identity disregard the differences between race, ethnicity and nationality.
Harris responded to Trump’s comments during an apparition hours later at a conference in Houston, Texas, organized by the historically black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho.
The vice president told the crowd that Trump’s comments were “the same old show, the division and the disrespect.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when faced with the facts,” she said. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”
