Former President Donald J. Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman on Wednesday in front of an audience of Black journalists, suggesting his opponent for the presidency had adopted her racial profile as a way to gain a political advantage.
“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said of Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian American, whose father is Black and who has always identified as a Black woman.
Ms. Harris has long embraced both her Black and South Asian identity. She attended Howard University, a historically Black institution, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority established for Black college women. Headlines from her earliest political victories dating back to the early 2000s highlighted both identities.
Mr. Trump’s remarks prompted gasps and jeers from the audience at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. The former president’s combative appearance there was one of the most unusual of the campaign so far as he sparred with reporters over diversity efforts, repeated falsehoods about a range of subjects and told the group that he was “the best president for the Black population” since Abraham Lincoln.
Ms. Harris responded in careful fashion on Wednesday night, saying in a speech in Houston that he had put on the “same old show” of “divisiveness and disrespect.”
“The American people deserve better,” Ms. Harris said at a convention of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities. “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength.”
Mr. Trump, who has appeared mainly before friendly audiences while campaigning, had ample warning that the panel of journalists awaiting him would be tough. Yet facing three Black female interviewers, he insulted Ms. Harris — the first Black woman on the top of a major-party ticket — even as he tried to appeal to Black voters as their best choice in November.
He began the interview by denouncing one of the reporters on the panel, Rachel Scott of ABC News, as “nasty” and “rude” after she questioned him about racist statements he had made in the past, including accusing former President Barack Obama of not being born in the United States and describing a Black prosecutor as an “animal.”
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News Voiced and Reported by: Buraq
Sources: BBC | VOA | NY Post | Daily Mail | Newsweek
Genre: Current Affairs | Geo-Politics | Trump vs Harris | America | US Elections
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