Former U.S. President Donald Trump has told a conference of Black journalists that Vice President Kamala Harris was “always of Indian heritage” until “she happened to turn Black.”
Trump attended a Q&A session on Wednesday at a gathering of Black journalists in Chicago. His comments were a response to a question about some Republicans’ efforts to minimize Harris’ title as the nation’s first Black and Asian-American woman to serve as vice president on a major party ticket.
Some her detractors allege Harris was a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) “hire.”
Trump’s identity assault was at the heart of a hostile interaction with Black reporters, one of whom he berated for asking about his history of offensive remarks about Black people.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” he said of the questioning. “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”
The combative remarks by Trump, who has been eager to improve his performance with Black voters, are likely to send shockwaves through the 2024 White House contest.
They come as the former president, convicted two months ago of felony fraud related to hush money payments to a porn star, struggles to formulate a new strategy less than 100 days before the election.
He held a campaign rally later Wednesday in Pennsylvania, a battleground state where he narrowly survived an assassination attempt earlier this month.
The Republican’s White House bid was thrown into chaos on July 21 when President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew his candidacy, backing Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Since then, the 59-year-old Harris has seen her favorability ratings jump and raked in $200 million in campaign donations.
Trump, who had placed Biden’s health at the heart of the election, now finds himself up against someone nearly two decades his junior, a trailblazer who became the country’s first Black, female and South Asian-origin vice president.
The seismic shake-up has forced Trump and the Republicans to recalibrate rapidly, and it appears they are struggling to settle on a line of attack.
As “Lyin’ Kamala,” “Laughin’ Kamala” and “Crazy Kamala” all failed to stick, Trump’s broadsides have become increasingly incendiary and untethered to reality.
Over the last week, Trump has falsely accused the vice president of being anti-Semitic, despite her decade-long marriage to a Jewish man, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and has claimed outrageously that she supports the murder of newborn babies.
The Harris campaign slammed Trump’s Wednesday remarks as “personal attacks and insults” and the latest example of “the same hostility he has shown throughout his life.”
Harris, whose mother was an Indian immigrant and whose father was Jamaican, has long identified as Black.
Trump and Republicans have launched more traditional political attacks, highlighting Harris’s pivots on positions she took while trying to carve out a lane in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential nominating contest.
Harris no longer supports abolishing private health insurance or a government buyback scheme for guns. She has also disavowed positions against fracking and is in favour of expanding the Supreme Court.
