NEW YORK (AP) — donald trump He enjoyed tremendous success from the first moment he took the presidential stage, fueling racial animosity.
Democrats expressed new outrage this week over the former president’s decision ridiculous and false accusation that vice president Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, only recently “turned black” for political gain. Some Republicans — even within Trump’s own campaign — appeared to distance themselves from the comment.
But Trump’s rhetoric this week, and his racial record since entering politics nearly a decade ago, indicate that divisive attacks on race could emerge as a central argument of the Republican Party in the three months leading up to Election Day — whether your allies want it or not. no.
A Trump adviser, granted anonymity Thursday to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign does not need to focus on “identity politics” because the case against Harris is that she is “so liberal she is dangerous.” The adviser highlighted Harris’ record on the southern border, on crime, the economy and foreign policy.
In a sign that Trump may not be coordinating his message with his own team, the Republican presidential candidate doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harris’ racial identity. He posted on his social media site a photo of Harris wearing traditional Indian attire in a family photo.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has supported Trump, was among several lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Thursday that rhetoric around race and identity is “not helpful to anyone” this election cycle.
“The color of people’s skin doesn’t matter at all,” Lummis said in an interview.
Trump resorted to an old tactic against Harris
It’s been less than two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid and supported Harris. Trump had to abandon the campaign against an 81-year-old white president showing signs of decline face a 59-year-old biracial vice president who is attracting much larger crowds It is new enthusiasm from Democratic donors.
Trump attended the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday. In an appearance broadcast live on cable news and shared widely online, he falsely suggested Harris misled voters about her race.
“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black and now wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or black? Trump said Wednesday.
At a rally in Pennsylvania hours later, Trump’s team played years-old headlines describing Harris as the “first Indian-American senator” on the arena’s big screen. And Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, told reporters traveling with him that Harris was a “chameleon” who changed her identity when convenient.
Harris attended Howard University, the historically black institution where she pledged the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and has been vocal throughout her career about being black and Indian American.
Some Republicans have argued that Trump’s message on race is part of a broader speech that could appeal to some black voters.
“We’re focused on politics and how we can really make waves and change in the black community. Economy, education, inflation, cost reduction. That’s the message,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, which supports Trump’s efforts to win more black voters and hosted him at a gala in February.
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he explored the question during a focus group Wednesday with undecided voters almost immediately after Trump’s interview. He found that Harris may be vulnerable to criticism based on her gender, but race-based attacks could hurt Trump among key voters this fall.
A lot has changed, Luntz said, since Trump rose to prominence by questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president.
“Trump seems to think he can criticize her for the way she handled her race. Well, no one is listening to these criticisms. It just doesn’t matter,” Luntz said. “If it’s racially motivated, it will backfire.”
Eugene Craig, former vice chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, said Trump “got what he wanted” at the NABJ convention, but that the substance of his argument ran the risk of being more offensive than appealing.
“The one thing black people will never tolerate is disrespecting blackness, and that goes for black Republicans as well,” said Craig, who is black and worked as a campaign staffer for conservative pundit Dan Bongino’s Senate campaign in 2012. He is now supporting Harris.
Trump has a long history of racist attacks
Trump has frequently used race to persecute his opponents since entering presidential politics nearly a decade ago.
Trump was perhaps the most famous member of the so-called “birther” movement questioning where Obama was born. He started his first campaign classifying Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug traffickers and later questioned whether a U.S. federal judge of Mexican heritage could be fair to him.
While in the White House, Trump defended a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and suggested that the U.S. stop accepting immigrants from “shit” countries including Haiti and parts of Africa. In August 2020, he suggested that Harris, who was born in California, might not meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements to be vice president.
And just two weeks after formally entering the 2024 campaign, he had dinner with notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his residence in Mar-a-Lago.
Trump won in 2016 but lost re-election in 2020 to Biden by narrow margins in several swing states. He won the 2024 Republican primary despite facing a series of criminal charges.
Some Trump critics feared that his racial strategy could, in any case, resonate with a significant part of the electorate. Voters will decide in November whether to send a black woman to the Oval Office for the first time in the country’s nearly 250-year history.
“I hope Trump’s attacks on Harris are just him flailing around ineffectively. But add Trump’s shamelessness, his willingness to lie, his demagogic talent and the issue of race – and a certain amount of liberal complacency that Trump is just plain stupid – and I’m worried,” said Bill Kristol, a prominent conservative anti-Trump. voice, posted on social media on Thursday.
Harris campaign thinks there is little upside for Trump
A Harris adviser described the moment as an opportunity to remind voters of the chaos and division Trump generates. But the adviser, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to engage in Trump’s attacks on race to the detriment of the campaign’s broader focus on key policies.
As long as the campaign is not distracted, the adviser said, Harris’ team believes there is little political advantage for Trump to continue attacking Harris’ racial identity.
Harris told a meeting of a historically black sorority on Wednesday that Trump’s attack was “the same old show: division and disrespect.”
However, on the ground, in at least one swing state, there were signs that Trump’s approach may be resonating — at least among the former president’s white male base.
Jim Abel, a 65-year-old retiree who attended a rally for Vance in Arizona on Wednesday, said he agreed with Trump’s focus on Harris’ racial identity.
“She’s not black,” Abel said. “I saw her parents. I have photos of her and her family and she is not black. She’s looking for the black vote.”
But several prominent Republican voices disagreed.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted a photo of a two-way street sign on X. One led to “Attacking Kamala’s record, lies and radicalism,” while the other, “Is she really black?”
“I don’t know, guys, I just think maybe winning the 2024 election might be more important than having this silly, meaningless conversation,” Shapiro wrote.
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Brown reported from Chicago. AP writers Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri in Washington; and Gabriel Sandoval in Glendale, Arizona, contributed to this report.
