Former President Donald J. Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman on Wednesday in front of an audience of Black journalists, suggesting his opponent for the presidency had adopted her racial profile as a way to gain a political advantage.
“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said of Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian American, whose father is Black and who has always identified as a Black woman.
Ms. Harris has long embraced both her Black and South Asian identity. She attended Howard University, a historically Black institution, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority established for Black college women. Headlines from her earliest political victories dating back to the early 2000s highlighted both identities.
Mr. Trump’s remarks prompted gasps and jeers from the audience at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. The former president’s combative appearance there was one of the most unusual of the campaign so far as he sparred with reporters over diversity efforts, repeated falsehoods about a range of subjects and told the group that he was “the best president for the Black population” since Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Trump, who has appeared mainly before friendly audiences while campaigning, had ample warning that the panel of journalists awaiting him would be tough. Yet facing three Black female interviewers, he insulted Ms. Harris — the first Black woman on the top of a major-party ticket — even as he tried to appeal to Black voters as their best choice in November.
He began the interview by denouncing one of the reporters on the panel, Rachel Scott of ABC News, as “nasty” and “rude” after she questioned him about racist statements he had made in the past, including accusing former President Barack Obama of not being born in the United States and describing a Black prosecutor as an “animal.”
He deflected a question about his promise to pardon the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by saying the Capitol was attacked last week by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Those protesters did deface buildings and burn an American flag, but they were at the Washington train station, not the Capitol.
Asked what he meant when he once said immigrants were taking “Black jobs,” he said: “A Black job is anybody who has a job.”
But his comments on Ms. Harris stood out.
“I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage,” said Mr. Trump, who makes a point of mispronouncing Ms. Harris’s name. “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. Now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know — is she Indian or is she Black? 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 and she became a Black person.”
Shortly after the event, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called Mr. Trump’s remarks “repulsive” and “insulting,” adding that “no one has any right to tell someone who they are.”
“She is the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name, period,” Ms. Pierre added.
The half-hour appearance came less than three weeks before Democrats converge on Chicago to formally nominate Ms. Harris and her running mate as the party’s candidates for the White House. For Mr. Trump, it was an opportunity to stake his claim to Black voters that he has insisted he can attract.
But it was not clear he succeeded. Instead, he disparaged the vice president in clearly racial terms and declined to say whether she had achieved her position based on merit or based on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“I really don’t know, could be, could be,” he said before suggesting that not all successful Black women were promoted by such means. He looked at Harris Faulkner, the Fox News host who was also on the panel, who was more solicitous to Mr. Trump during the event. “I know this lady right over there, Harris, is a fantastic person.”
His suggestion that “somebody should look into” Ms. Harris’s shift in ethnic and racial identity was reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s earliest racist gambit against Mr. Obama, whom he accused of being born outside the United States. In that effort too, he called for “investigations” into the former president’s true birthplace and suggested Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was a lie.
Ms. Faulkner did offer Mr. Trump some relief, bringing up inflation and the assassination attempt on his life.
But Ms. Scott and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter at Semafor, pressed the former president hard — on his promise to give police officers immunity from prosecution, his promise to pardon the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the inflammatory statements made in the past by his vice-presidential pick, Senator JD Vance of Ohio.
“I came onto a stage like this and I got treated so rudely,” he complained at one point.
Reporters in the room repeatedly scoffed as Mr. Trump made disparaging remarks and returned to his central theme. “I love the Black population of this country,” he said. “I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country.”
The appearance of the Republican presidential nominee had divided the association, which typically welcomes the leading candidates from both parties.
A co-chairwoman of the convention, the Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, stepped down from her post over it, while a prominent member of the association, April Ryan, warned that Mr. Trump’s White House had threatened Black women.
“The reports of attacks on Black women White House correspondents by the then-president of the United States are not myth or conjecture, but fact,” Ms. Ryan, the White House correspondent for The Grio, a media company geared toward Black Americans, wrote in a social media post.
But leaders of the association said journalists could not shy from interviewing major candidates, and the women on the stage pressed the former president and delivered a revealing interview.
The association invited Ms. Harris but the group’s president, Ken Lemon, said Wednesday morning that she was not available.
“We are in talks about virtual options in the future and are still working to reach an agreement,” he wrote.
Among the more memorable exchanges was when Mr. Trump was asked whether his running mate, Senator JD Vance, would be prepared to take over if necessary. Mr. Trump was less than effusive, saying the race was really about the top of the ticket.
“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me. If you like me, I’m going to win. If you don’t like me, I’m not going to win.”
After the event, Mr. Trump seemed to see political value in the controversy he had created. The attack on Ms. Harris’s racial identity has been percolating in right-wing circles and among the former president’s supporters, and in the high-profile interview, he thrust it into the mainstream.
“Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black,” he wrote on his social media platform. “She uses everybody, including her racial identity.”
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