Past president Donald J. Trunp spoke today to the National Association of Black Journalists Convention. Iowa author Mike Triggs* reports:
“He (Donald J. Trump) is weird … and there’s no question he was playing the race card with the wrong audience.
Today at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention, Trump said that Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee because she is a Black woman. He then went on to say Harris “happened to turn Black” after “she was always of Indian heritage.”
Harris is Black and South Asian.
The former president offered no evidence for his false implication that Harris was hiding something about her ethnic background. She is a graduate of Howard University, the most famous of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities.
As is so often the case, Trump couldn’t leave it at that, so he went on to say, 1I didn’t know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?’
Trump added: “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, she went — she became Black. Somebody should look into that.”
I’m guessing he also thinks that one day, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who is on Harris’ short list for Vice President, just ‘happened to turn gay.'”
The Washington Post noted Trump’s charge that Harris just decided (faked?) being Black as a means of political expediency and called it a “pivotal moment” for Harris.
“On Wednesday night, Harris answered Trump, saying it was “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect.” Continuing …
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,” she said. “A leader who doesn’t respond with hostility and anger when presented with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
AP NEWS followed up with details on Harris’s history:
“Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the US. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged to the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alph. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting legislation to strengthen voting rights and to reform policing.”
Cleve R. Wootson Jr and Sabrina Rodriguez: The Washington Post: Harris faces a pivotal moment as Trump questions her identity
Matt Brown and Michele L Price, AP NEWS: Donald Trump falsely suggests Harris misled voters about her race
*Author Mike Triggs self-identifies as an aging political junk. He is also the author of You Can’t Make this $#1+U! which was #3 on Amazon’s “Best Selling LGBtZ+ Humorous Fiction.”