Trump attack on Harris’s race frustrates and panics Republicans
By
Brady Knox
August 1, 2024 9:47 am
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Former President Donald Trump is under pressure for his latest line of attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, questioning her racial identity.
Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference Wednesday in Chicago, where he got into a tense exchange with several black journalists. At one part of the exchange, Trump implicitly accused Harris of being a fraud, claiming that she shifted between stressing her Indian and Jamaican racial identities.
“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was black, until a number of years ago when she ran (as) black, and now she wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she black?”
“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,” he added, to disapproval from the crowd.
The remark caused many Republicans to panic, who have treated Harris’s race as a political third rail.
Republicans immediately started hitting the panic button, with some down-ballot candidates taking Trump’s statements on more directly than others.
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