Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at Vice President Kamala Harris, falsely claiming that the first Black female vice president had just recently “turned Black.””I’ve known her a long time, not directly, indirectly, and she was always of Indian heritage,” Trump said during an on-stage at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference in Chicago. “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. And now she wants to be known as Black.”According to some journalists in the room, there were audible gasps when Trump made his statement. At the start of the interview, ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked the former president about his long history of dismissing Black people, including pushing the racist theory that President Barack Obama was not a US citizen.Scott asked Trump if he considered Harris to be a “DEI hire,” an attack some Republicans have used against the vice president and likely Democratic presidential nominee.Harris is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. In 2019, she told The Washington Post that she had not thought much about her racial identity before entering politics. She said that she simply identified as “an American.”Harris has also made clear years that she identified as an African-American.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold.” “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”Asked about Trump’s comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded with shock.”What you just read out to me is repulsive,” Jean-Pierre said when Trump’s statement was read back to her. “It’s insulting. No one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify.”
