Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attacked Vice-President Kamala Harris about her racial identity, suggesting she had decided to “turn Black” for political gains.
“So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” he asked during a heated interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference on Wednesday (July 31), about his election rival. He falsely accused Harris of having identified as Indian but then, “all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a Black person”.
Trump’s inflammatory comments marked an escalation of his vitriol against the vice-president, who has long identified as Black and graduated from a historically Black university.
Harris later denounced the attacks as “the same old show” of “the divisiveness and the disrespect”. In her address to a sorority gathering in Houston, Texas, she slammed the attacks. “The American people deserve better,” she said. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us, they are an essential source of our strength.”
Trump’s White House bid was thrown into chaos on July 21 when President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy, backing Harris as the Democratic nominee. She has since seen her favourability ratings jump and raked in over $200 million in campaign donations.
The former US president’s remarks are likely to send shockwaves through the 2024 White House contest. He has been eager to improve his performance with Black voters.
‘Everything about Kamala Harris is phony’
After his controversial remarks during the interview, he held a campaign rally in battleground state Pennsylvania — where he narrowly survived an assassination bid earlier this month — and continued the verbal assault on his rival.
“Everything about Kamala Harris’s rollout, it’s phony,” he told the crowd, adding she “tried to outbrand a new Southern accent” when she addressed a large rally on Tuesday (July 31) in Atlanta, Georgia.
“The contrast could not be more stark,” he said. “On the one hand you have a radical left puppet candidate who is fake fake fake, and on the other hand you have a president who will fight fight fight for America.”
Earlier in the election contest, Trump was banking on Biden’s health but he has been forced to recalibrate and is struggling to settle on a line of attack. Harris is the country’s first Black, female and South Asian-origin vice president.
As ‘Lyin’ Kamala’, ‘Laughin’ Kamala’ and ‘Crazy Kamala’ all failed to stick, Trump’s broadsides have become increasingly incendiary and untethered to reality. In the last week, he has falsely accused the vice-president of being anti-Semitic — despite her marriage to a Jewish man, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff — and has claimed outrageously that she supports the murder of newborns.
(With agency inputs)
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