Former United States President Donald Trump has questioned whether his Democratic rival Kamala Harris is “Indian or Black”, as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee made a contentious appearance at a Black journalists’ convention.
Speaking on Wednesday at the annual gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump said he had “indirectly” known the US vice president for a long time.
“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 and now she wants to be known as Black,” he said.
“So, I don’t know, is she Indian or Black?” Trump continued. “I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t.”
Harris, 59, has long self-identified as both Black and South Asian. She was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father and is the first Black and the first Asian-American vice president in US history.
Since launching her White House campaign earlier this month after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Harris has faced a barrage of sexist and racist attacks online.
Trump’s remarks on Wednesday were quickly condemned, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre labelling them “repulsive” and “insulting”.
“No one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.
In a social media post, Stacey Plaskett, who represents the US Virgin Islands in the US House of Representatives, summed up Trump’s address as, “Lies, Disrespectful, Lies, Ranting Lies, Race-baiting, Misinformation, Bigotry, Lies, Ignorance, Meandering Lies”.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign said in a statement that the former president’s interview demonstrated the “hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president”.
“Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us,” the statement read. “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.”
The exchange came a day after a series of opinion polls showed Harris had erased Trump’s lead in the race for the White House, closing the gap nationwide and in several key swing states as the November 5 vote nears.
Harris was ahead of Trump in four battleground states, while the former president was ahead in two, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of registered voters on Tuesday.
The vice president, who has yet to be officially confirmed as the Democratic Party’s 2024 candidate but is widely expected to get the nomination next month, has sought to paint Trump as a threat to the American people.
The momentum in the election race is shifting, and “Donald Trump is feeling it”, Harris said during a rally in Georgia on Tuesday evening, as a crowd of about 10,000 people cheered and shouted her nascent campaign slogan “We are not going back”.
Harris’s team says it has raised $200m and signed up 170,000 new volunteers since her campaign was launched.
On Wednesday, she also received the endorsement of the influential United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
“Her historic candidacy builds on the Biden-Harris administration’s proven track record of standing with the UAW and delivering major gains for the working class,” the union’s executive committee said.
