The new birtherism looks a lot like the old birtherism.
Onstage at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention today, Donald Trump complained bitterly that technical difficulties had delayed his appearance, but he had no trouble squeezing plenty of inflammatory comments into a shortened interview.
The former president refused to condemn the violent rioters on January 6, 2021. He gave only faint support for J. D. Vance’s preparedness to serve as president. He wouldn’t refute allies’ claim that his presumptive presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a “DEI candidate.” And in the most eye-popping moment, he questioned whether Harris is really Black.
“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, but 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?”
Who knows what Trump is talking about? Harris was born in the United States to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She attended Howard University, one of the country’s most famed historically Black institutions, and has never shied away from her Black heritage during her career as a politician. But Trump has long engaged in these kinds of racial-purity tests. During a 1993 congressional hearing, he challenged a Native American casino, saying, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” He built his national political profile by baselessly questioning former President Barack Obama’s American citizenship.
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As is often the case with Trump, the facts are beside the point. Trump may have been trying to undermine Harris’s bona fides with Black voters. His strategy to beat President Joe Biden included drawing some Black voters away from the Democratic Party and hoping that other Black voters—who, polling suggested, were unenthusiastic about Biden’s candidacy—would just stay home. Biden’s replacement by Harris threatens that path by energizing Black voters. If Trump’s goal at NABJ was to build a friendly rapport with the Black community, however, he approached it in a curious manner.
The interview, conducted by ABC’s Rachel Scott, Semafor’s Kadia Goba, and Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, was a subject of controversy in the days leading up to it. Some NABJ members questioned the decision to invite Trump at all (and wondered why Harris wasn’t speaking). One of the convention’s co-chairs, the Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, resigned, citing “the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”
Trump’s appearance showed why the invitation was worthwhile, though. The former president seldom conducts interviews that are not either with friendly outlets or on his own territory (most often at Mar-a-Lago), or both. He doesn’t often have to answer hard questions before a hostile or even skeptical audience, and when he did today, it went off the rails fast.
“A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today,” Scott said. “You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen of color who were American citizens to go back to where they came from. You have used words like animal and rabid to describe Black district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a ‘loser,’ saying the questions they ask are ‘stupid and racist.’ You have had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. My question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you: Why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
Every one of Scott’s statements is true, and Trump should have been prepared to answer her question. But he’s so accustomed to friendly and fawning interviews that he was furious.
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“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question,” Trump sniped. “I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit; I love the Black population of this country; I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country … I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”
Things didn’t get much smoother from there. Trump said the message he wanted to impart at the conference was that immigration was bad for the Black community, but when Trump says that immigrants are taking “Black jobs,” many people hear him categorizing low-skilled or manual jobs as “Black.” (Politifact notes that the claim is dubious anyway.) Pressed today on what he means, Trump said that any job held by a Black person is a Black job, and sought to connect the point with his audience.
“A lot of journalists in this room are Black,” he told the National Association of Black Journalists. On that, at least, there could be no disagreement.
