First Donald Trump falsely asserted that Kamala Harris had long identified herself primarily as Indian American, and only leaned into the Black part of her mixed-race identity recently to benefit herself politically.<\/p>\n
Then the pile-on began.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, portrayed the vice president as \u201ca chameleon\u201d and suggested she affected a Southern accent when talking to Southern voters: \u201cShe presents a different posture, depending on which audience that she\u2019s in front of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Trump\u2019s son and has advised the former president, became one of many Republicans who posted a photo of a young Harris in a sari and insisted that Trump \u201cbrings up a solid point!\u201d<\/p>\n
And former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka said on CNN that Harris was \u201ca disaster whose only qualifications was having a vagina and the right skin color. She\u2019s a DEI hire, right?\u201d He added mockingly: \u201cShe\u2019s a woman! She\u2019s colored! Therefore, she\u2019s got to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The lightning-fast spread of the attack line in the day after Trump\u2019s remarks showcased both his continued willingness to weaponize race and gender fissures to cut down political opponents, and the ready-made echo chamber primed to amplify attacks rooted in identity.<\/p>\n
It seemed to herald a new and vitriolic phase of the 2024 campaign even as it reflects a familiar pattern. Trump, suddenly facing a Black woman, is leaning into his ugliest political instincts and finding the conservative ecosphere willing to go along. More than a decade after he began baselessly questioning the birthplace of the country\u2019s first Black president, Trump has helped to normalize such offensive attacks \u2014 and a dwindling minority in his party appear willing to publicly challenge his most outrageous statements.<\/p>\n
But beneath the base attacks, there is also a political calculus \u2014 and political peril \u2014 in both Trump\u2019s words and Harris\u2019s responses.<\/p>\n
For Trump, denunciations based on race and gender could alienate Black, minority and young voters, as well as key groups of swing voters, including suburban women who see Harris\u2019s sudden entry into the race as a moment of historic progress.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s campaign is actively courting all of those groups; his controversial comments at the National Association of Black Journalists convention Wednesday were part of a push to highlight what he has delivered for Black Americans. Even outside of those pivotal groups, Trump\u2019s language \u2014 and his party\u2019s amplification of it \u2014 may send a message to voters that a second Trump term would be riddled with chaos and animus.<\/p>\n
Harris became the Democrats\u2019 likely nominee after President Biden on July 21 bowed to pressure to step aside following a rocky performance in a presidential debate against Trump.<\/p>\n
Afterward, several GOP lawmakers called Harris a \u201cDEI candidate,\u201d a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that many conservatives have assailed. House Republican leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson, asked members to refrain from such comments, saying the fight should be based on policy, not identity.<\/p>\n
Asked about Trump\u2019s comments on Harris\u2019s race this week, some GOP lawmakers suggested Trump should focus on policy but declined to openly criticize him.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s aides and supporters have thought that the upended race for president could quickly devolve into racist and misogynistic attacks, but they concede Harris faces a delicate balance on how to respond. She is not just a minority woman who has been insulted by a White man, but also a politician whose opponent has successfully used grievance and racial animus to power his own ascent \u2014 and to defeat a diverse array of opponents on the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Trump did today was essentially take a script and a paragraph from a playbook where he\u2019s been perhaps one of the major authors in the last 15 years,\u201d said Donna Brazile, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee who managed Al Gore\u2019s campaign for president in 2000. \u201cTrump wants to bring us backward so that we can respond to the hate and division and fear of yesterday and not the promise and the opportunities that will confront us in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.<\/p>\n
Harris addressed Trump\u2019s statements Wednesday during remarks at the annual gathering of the historically Black Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, calling Trump\u2019s words \u201cthe same old show \u2014 the divisiveness and the disrespect.\u201d But while she spoke of his attacks on the trio of Black female journalists who moderated the conversation with Trump, she did not directly speak to the attacks on her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2026 We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s mother was born in India, and her father is from Jamaica. Harris has embraced both cultures for decades. She attended historically Black Howard University and has been a member of a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, since the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear what motivated Trump to question Harris\u2019s racial identity at the gathering of Black journalists. Trump has publicly lamented the change at the top of the ticket, calling it a \u201ccoup\u201d at a recent event. And while Trump led Biden in national polls and battleground states after the disastrous debate performance by the president, Harris\u2019s entry has put the race at parity. Democrats hope Harris will galvanize minority and younger voters and help the party retain the White House.<\/p>\n
Trump made the initial comments Wednesday during a question-and-answer segment moderated by three Black female journalists at the NABJ\u2019s convention in Chicago. Trump\u2019s presence had already sparked controversy within the organization by critics who said the NABJ was amplifying the platform of a candidate who had assailed journalists of color.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don\u2019t know, is she Indian or is she Black?\u201d Trump said. He added later that Harris \u201cwas Indian all the way\u201d but then \u201cbecame a Black person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then he and his campaign have dug in further, insisting that old articles and video clips highlighting Harris\u2019s Indian heritage somehow negate her Black identity. On Wednesday night, screens at Trump\u2019s rally in Harrisburg, Pa., flashed headlines that declared Harris an \u201cIndian American U.S. Senator.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Trump reposted far-right activist Laura Loomer\u2019s false claims that Harris\u2019s birth certificate shows she is \u201clying about being Black\u201d \u2014 underscoring how the former president has given a spotlight to the most extreme fringes of his party. The document she shared lists Harris\u2019s father as \u201cJamaican.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Trump\u2019s campaign did not respond Thursday to questions about the repost and about whether the former president believes Harris is Black.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s political ascent began during the term of President Barack Obama, when Trump became perhaps the most prominent face of the birther movement, which falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya \u2014 rather than his real birthplace of Hawaii \u2014 and thus constitutionally unable to be president. He dismissed his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton as \u201cunbalanced\u201d and \u201cunhinged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s statements weren\u2019t his first personal attacks against Harris. He has also insulted her intelligence, saying she would be a laughingstock in front of world leaders \u2014 all while frequently mispronouncing her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll be like a play toy,\u201d Trump told Fox News. \u201cThey look at her and they say, \u2018We can\u2019t believe we got so lucky.\u2019 They\u2019re going to walk all over her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First Donald Trump falsely asserted that Kamala Harris had long identified herself primarily as Indian American, and only leaned into the Black part of her mixed-race identity recently to benefit herself politically. Then the pile-on began. Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, portrayed the vice president as \u201ca chameleon\u201d and suggested she affected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}