Vice President Kamala Harris did not let former President Donald Trump‘s comments about her biracial background go unaddressed Wednesday night.
During a keynote speech at a Houston event commemorating a historically black sorority, Harris underscored how Trump’s remarks earlier in the day that she “turned black” were “the same old show.”
“We all here remember what those four years were like, and today, we were giving yet another reminder,” Harris told the crowd. “This afternoon, Donald Trump spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, and it was the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect, and let me just say: The American people deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” she said. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
During his lengthy Q&A session at the conference in Chicago with three black journalists, including Fox News‘s Harris Faulkner, Trump asserted falsely that Harris had presented herself as an Indian woman and only later in her career identified as black. Harris’s father was Jamaican and her mother was Indian American.
“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 Wednesday afternoon. “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.
Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus during her time in the Senate and years before that a member of a black sorority at a historically black college.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Trump’s comments during her briefing while his panel was still ongoing.
“What you just read out to me is repulsive, it’s insulting, and, you know, no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one’s right. It is someone’s own decisions,” Jean-Pierre told reporters after it was relayed to her what Trump said. “I’ll add this, only she can speak to her experience. Only she can speak to what it’s like. She’s the only person that can do that.”
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler was also quick to excoriate Trump, contending the former president “lobbed personal attacks and insults at black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency.”
“Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign,” Tyler wrote in a statement. “It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on Sept. 10.”
The Trump campaign similarly focused on Trump’s at-times confrontational dynamic with his questioners, who, aside from Faulkner, included ABC’s Rachel Scott and Semafor’s Kadia Goba.
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“Members of the media need to make a decision, and answer if their goal is to unite the country or further divide us, because based on the unhinged and unprofessional commentary directed toward President Trump today by certain members of the media, many media elites clearly want to see us remain divided,” Trump campaign senior adviser Lynne Patton, who herself is black, wrote.
“Today’s biased and rude treatment from certain hostile members of the media will backfire massively,” she added. “You would think that the media would have learned something from their repeat episodes of fake outrage ever since President Trump first came down the escalator in 2015, but some just refuse to ‘get it.’ This will be their undoing in 2024.”
