Former President Donald Trump is attempting to divide the nation by falsely questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ race, Gov. Roy Cooper said on Thursday.
“He’s [Trump] showing us who he is,” Cooper said during an interview with reporters following a reproductive freedom rally in Durham to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Trump questioned Harris’ raced during an interview this week at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago.
“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 during the NABJ interview. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Meanwhile, Harris called Trump’s false remarks about her race the “same old show; the divisiveness and the disrespect.”
Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities. While there, she pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. And as a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Cooper said the attack on Harris — her father is Jamaican and her mother is an Indian — reminds him of the tactic Trump used against former president Barack Obama when he repeatedly questioned Obama’s citizenship and birthplace.
“This is what MAGA is about,” Cooper said. “I think it’s pretty clear that with young people across this country, with people of color, everybody who wants to have a diverse society where we can all work together for the better of our country, they need to support Kamala Harris this fall.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., conceded that Trump’s remarks were likely a distraction, ABC News reported.
“I think it shifts away from the discussion I want to focus on, but it may very well be that we have a difference of opinions about what is going to move the voters,” Tillis said. “I for one think it’s the failure on the economy the failure on the border and the failure on national security.”
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