Washington:
Donald Trump on Wednesday questioned whether Democrat Kamala Harris is truly black or using race as a political expediency in an interview that sent shockwaves throughout the 2024 presidential race.
“She’s always had Indian heritage and was just promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black,” Trump told a panel of interviewers from the National Association of Negro People. Conference of journalists in Chicago.
“And now she wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or black?” he said of Harris, who is the first black, female and South Asian heritage vice president in U.S. history.
“I respect any of them, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian the whole time and then all of a sudden she took a turn and became a person of color.”
The Republican presidential candidate’s provocative comments were the latest in a series of escalating personal attacks by the 78-year-old against Harris, and follow his multiple comments this week in which he accused Harris – who is married to a Jewish woman. American – of being anti-Semitic.
President Joe Biden’s White House quickly responded to Trump’s comments, calling them “insulting.”
“Nobody has the right to tell someone who they are, how they identify,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the first black woman to hold the position, told reporters.
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