Trump escalates race attacks on Harris, worrying some Republicans

Donald Trump continued to raise false and incendiary questions about US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ racial identity on Aug 1, as Republicans watched the former president drive his campaign into a divisive and potentially damaging direction.

A day after telling an audience of black journalists in Chicago that Ms Harris

had “all of a sudden” decided to become “a black person”

, Trump posted a photo on his social media site of Ms Harris dressed in a sari with a caption stating: “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian heritage are very much appreciated.”

Trump also amplified posts from right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who had posted copies of Ms Harris’ birth certificate and had spread false accusations that Ms Harris has lied about her race.

Ms Harris, whose father is from Jamaica and whose mother was Indian American, has long identified with both her black and South Asian heritage.

An alumna of a historically black institution, Howard University, she responded to Trump’s comments during her speech at a convention of black sororities on July 31, saying: “The American people deserve better.”

Whether Trump’s initial remarks on July 31 were planned or not, the Trump team is clearly intensifying this line of attack.

“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 told the audience of black journalists. “So, I don’t know: Is she Indian, or is she black?”

For a Republican Party that has acclimatised itself to a decade of combustible comments from Trump, the reaction to his latest remarks had the feeling of a familiar routine: Republicans mostly rolled their eyes in private and held their tongues in public.

Mr David Kochel, a long-time Republican strategist, called the racial identity attack unneeded and risky when, he said, Trump had a clear case against Ms Harris on policy grounds.

“It’s a pretty simple campaign. Why complicate with questions around race is beyond me,” Mr Kochel said. “The campaign is to tie her to the unpopular Biden economy and prosecute the case against her on the border.”

But Trump’s campaign instead leaned into his questioning of Ms Harris’ heritage. At a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on the night of July 31, his campaign put headlines of her Indian American background on the big screens above the crowd.

“Rally signage is the best signage!” Mr Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser, wrote on X with the laughing emoji.

As Trump’s comments ricocheted around the political world, politicians from both parties seemed to be trying to determine whether such an attack would be effective in 2024, amid a rapidly diversifying electorate. More than 12 per cent of Americans identify as multiracial.

Democrats denounced him as racist.

“We need to fiercely call out this type of bigotry and ignorance,” Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida wrote on X, responding to Trump’s post of Ms Harris in Indian garb. “During my primary race, some folks said similar things about me. That I wasn’t actually black because my mom is Cuban. Or that I’m not actually Latino because I’m black.”

The rare Republican to criticise Trump was Mr Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor, who is running for Senate against a black woman, Ms Angela Alsobrooks, county executive of Prince George’s County, in a state where Trump is deeply unpopular. Mr Hogan denounced Trump’s comments as “unacceptable and abhorrent”.

Others sought to refashion and reframe Trump’s baseless allegation, seeking safe ground through a more sanitised version.

Those included Senator J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, who said at a rally that Trump had attended the black journalists’ conference “because he’s running to be president for all Americans”. He attempted to recast Trump’s questions about Ms Harris’ race as questions about her character.

“Kamala Harris is a phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her,” Mr Vance said.

Mr Taylor Budowich, chief executive of Make America Great Again, the leading pro-Trump super political action committee, echoed that view, saying: “Ms Harris had an authenticity problem, and president Trump was right to expose it.

“At every step of her career she has invented or reinvented herself, adopting whatever position, dialect or story necessary to get what she wants.”

Democrats were dubious that authenticity was the real issue.

“To call someone a phony because of their race or ethnicity; that is not getting to the problem – that’s appealing to racism,” Mr James Carville, a Democratic strategist, said. “I’m sorry, that excuse doesn’t fly.”

Still, some Democrats privately said that the whole episode reminded them uncomfortably of 2016. Trump stoked controversy after controversy – dominating repeated news cycles – all summer that year before eventually defeating Mrs Hillary Clinton to win the White House.

“We must stay vigilant and stay focused on the stakes in this election,” said Ms Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, the progressive organising group.

Mr Dennis Lennox, a Michigan-based Republican strategist, said the episode was giving him flashbacks to his party’s struggles in 2008 to land a message against Mr Barack Obama, who was then the Democratic presidential nominee.

“Saying the sitting vice-president of the United States, who is a black woman, isn’t black, seems like you’re throwing everything against the wall and hoping something sticks,” he said.

But Mr Lennox was leaving open the possibility that Trump was injecting himself into what has been a 10-day period of favourable news and developments for Ms Harris since she entered the race after President Joe Biden bowed out and endorsed her.

“Either Trump masterfully did that to stop the narrative that Kamala was building in the media, or he completely walked into the trap he’s walked into multiple times in the past,” Mr Lennox said. “It’s an open question which one is correct.” NYTIMES