Donald Trump’s take on Kamala Harris’s racial identity somehow managed to get even worse.
During Tuesday night’s debate, the former president was probed about his controversial statements on Harris’s racial identity, including that the biracial Democrat had “turned Black.”
“I want to ask a bigger picture question tonight. Why do you think that it’s appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?” prompted ABC’s David Muir.
“I don’t. And I don’t care,” Trump said. “I don’t care what she is. I don’t care.”
“You make a big deal out of something, I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is okay with me,” he continued. “All I can say is that I read where she was not Black—that she put out, I’ll say that. And then I read that she was Black. And that’s okay. Either one is okay with me. That’s up to her.”
In one of the strangest moments, Trump manages to give the answer his campaign probably advised him to give on Kamala Harris’ race but when pressed, he reverts back to “I read where she was not black” pic.twitter.com/2Y7uiZZvmB
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 11, 2024
Trump’s outrageous claim first sprang up at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in early August, when the 78-year-old white candidate tried and failed to curry favor with the crowd by trash-talking Harris’s racial identity.
“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,” Trump said at the convention, seemingly unable to grasp how a mixed-race person (who now make up more than 10 percent of the United States population, according to the 2020 census) could have two parents from different cultures but still manage to appreciate both.
