Washington: Donald Trump raised questions on Wednesday about Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity during an interview that reverberated through the 2024 presidential race. Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, Trump suggested that Harris, who is the first Black, female, and South-Asian-heritage vice president in U.S. history, was leveraging her race for political gain.
“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 remarked to the panel of interviewers. “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.”
These comments mark the latest in a series of personal attacks by the 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee on Harris. Earlier in the week, Trump also accused Harris, who is married to a Jewish-American, of being anti-Semitic.
The Biden administration quickly condemned Trump’s remarks. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black woman to hold the position, called the comments “insulting” and stated, “No one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify.”
