Trump is making his 2024 campaign about Harris' race, whether Republicans want him to or not.
New York: Donald Trump has been a great success since the first moment he entered the presidential platform by raising racial hatred.
Democrats expressed renewed outrage this week over the former president's sarcastic and false accusation that Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, was recently “blackened” for political gain. Some Republicans — even from within Trump's own campaign — seemed to distance themselves from the comments.
But Trump's rhetoric this week, and his record on the race since he entered politics nearly a decade ago, indicate that divisive attacks on race could emerge as a key GOP argument in the three-month sprint to Election Day — whether his allies want them to or not. no
A Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign doesn't need to focus on “identity politics” because the case against Harris is that he is “so liberal it's dangerous.” The adviser pointed to Harris' record on the southern border, crime, the economy and foreign policy.
In a sign that Trump may not have coordinated his message with his own team, the Republican presidential nominee doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harris' racial identity. He posted a picture on his social media site of Harris wearing traditional Indian attire in a family photo.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has endorsed Trump, was one of several lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Thursday that rhetoric around race and identity is “not helpful to anyone” this election cycle.
Lummis said in an interview, “The color of a person's skin doesn't matter.
Trump reverted to old tactics against Harris
Less than two weeks have passed since President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed Harris. Trump has had to pivot to campaign against the 81-year-old white president, showing signs of refusing to face the 59-year-old biracial vice president, who has drawn huge crowds and renewed enthusiasm from Democratic donors.
Trump attended the National Association of Black Journalists' conference on Wednesday. In an appearance broadcast live on cable news and widely shared online, he suggested Harris misled voters about his race.
“I didn't know she was black until years ago when she became black and now she wants to be known as black. So, I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?” Trump said Wednesday.
Hours later at the Pennsylvania rally, Trump's team displayed years-old news headlines on the arena's big screen describing Harris as the “first Indian-American senator.” and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump's running mate, told reporters traveling with him that Harris was a “chameleon” who changed his identity when it was convenient.
Harris attended Howard University, a historically black institution where she pledged the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and often spoke about being black and Indian American throughout her career.
Some Republicans argued that Trump's message on race was part of a broader pitch that might appeal to some black voters.
“We're focused on policy and how we can really make waves and make changes in the black community. Economics, education, inflation, lower costs. That's the message,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, which supports Trump's efforts to win over more black voters. He was hosted at a festival in February.
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he explored the issue in a Wednesday focus group with swing voters shortly after Trump's interview. He found that while Harris may be vulnerable to criticism based on her gender, race-based attacks could hurt Trump among the most important voters this fall.
Luntz said a lot has changed since Trump rose to prominence by questioning the citizenship of the country's first black president, Barack Obama.
“Trump might think he can criticize her for how she's handled his race. Well, no one hears that criticism. It doesn't matter,” Luntz said. “If it's racially driven, it will backfire.”
Eugene Craig, a former vice chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, said Trump “got what he wanted” at the NABJ conference, but the substance of his argument was more offensive than appealing.
“The one thing black people will never tolerate is disrespect for blackness, and that goes for black Republicans,” said Craig, who is black and worked on the staff of conservative pundit Dan Bongino's 2012 Senate campaign. He is now supporting Harris.
Trump has a long history of racial attacks
Since entering presidential politics nearly a decade ago, Trump has repeatedly used race to go after his opponents.
Trump was perhaps the most famous member of the so-called “birther” movement that questioned where Obama was born. He began his first campaign by casting Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug traffickers and later questioned whether a US federal judge of Mexican heritage could be fair to him.
While in the White House, Trump defended a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and suggested the US stop accepting immigrants from “shithole” countries, including Haiti and parts of Africa. In August 2020, he suggested that California-born Harris might not meet the Constitution's eligibility requirements to be vice president.
And two weeks after formally entering the 2024 campaign, he dined with notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Trump won in 2016 but narrowly lost re-election to Biden in 2020 in several swing states. He won the 2024 Republican primary despite facing a raft of criminal charges.
Some Trump critics worried that his racial strategy might not resonate with a significant portion of the electorate anyway. Voters will decide in November whether to send a black woman to the Oval Office for the first time in the nation's nearly 250-year history.
“I hope that Trump's attacks on Harris are effectively throwing him off. But put together Trump's shamelessness, his willingness to lie, his demagogic talent, and the issue of race — and a certain amount of liberal complacency that Trump is just stupid — and I'm worried,” A prominent anti-Trump conservative is Bill Kristol. Awaz posted on social media on Thursday.
The Harris campaign thinks there is little upside for Trump
A Harris adviser described the moment as a reminder of the chaos and division Trump has caused. But the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to engage in Trump's attacks on the race at the expense of the campaign's broader focus on key policies.
As long as the campaign doesn't deviate, the adviser said, Harris' team believes there is little political complicity for Trump to continue attacking Harris' racial identity.
Harris told a gathering of historically black societies on Wednesday that Trump's attacks were “the same old show: division and disrespect.”
In at least one swing state on the ground, however, there were signs that Trump's approach might resonate — at least with the former president's white male base.
Jim Abel, a 65-year-old retiree who attended a rally for Vance on Wednesday in Arizona, said he agreed with Trump's focus on Harris' racial identity.
“He's not black,” Abel said. “I've seen her parents. I have pictures of her and her family and she's not black. She's looking for the black vote.”
But many high-profile Republican voices disagree.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted a picture of a road sign with two directions on the X. One “attacked Kamala's record, lies and bigotry” while another asked “Is she really black?”
“I don't know guys, I think winning the 2024 election might be more important than having this silly and pointless conversation,” Shapiro wrote.
