Donald Trump (left) and Kamala Harris. | AFP
Donald Trump questioned Wednesday whether Democrat Kamala Harris is really Black or is using race as a political convenience in an interview that sent shockwaves through the 2024 presidential contest.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” Trump told a panel of interviewers at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago.
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“And now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” he said of Harris, who is the first Black, female, and South-Asian-heritage vice president in US history.
“I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”
The provocative comments by the Republican presidential nominee were the latest in a stream of ratcheted up personal attacks by the 78-year-old on Harris, and follow his multiple remarks this week in which he accused Harris — who is married to a Jewish-American — of being anti-Semitic.
President Joe Biden’s White House swiftly responded to Trump’s comments, calling them “insulting.”
“No one has any 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.
Earlier on Tuesday, US presidential hopeful Kamala Harris hit the campaign trail in Georgia, hoping to expand Democrats’ battleground map against Donald Trump and appeal to young Black voters with an appearance by hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion.
She also challenged Trump to debate her face-to-face.