CHICAGO: Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris had decided to “go black” for political gain as he attacked his Democratic rival in the White House during a combative and inflammatory interaction with African-American journalists in Chicago.
The former Republican president’s provocation marked an escalation of the 78-year-old’s ire against Harris, who he falsely accused of identifying as Indian but then “suddenly doing a U-turn and becoming black.”
Trump’s identity attack was at the heart of a hostile interaction with black reporters, one of whom he berated for asking about his history of making offensive remarks about black people.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” he told the hearing.
The combative remarks by Trump, who has been eager to improve his performance with black voters, are likely to cause a shock in the 2024 race for the White House.
They come as the former president, convicted two months ago of felony fraud related to secret payments to a porn star, tries to formulate a new strategy less than 100 days before the election.
Later on Wednesday, he is holding a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the battleground where he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt earlier this month.
The Republican bid for the White House was thrown into disarray on July 21 when President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Since then, the 59-year-old Harris has seen her approval ratings soar and rake in $200 million in campaign donations.
Trump, who put Biden’s health at the center of the election, now finds himself up against someone nearly two decades younger, a trailblazer who became the nation’s first black, female and South Asian vice president.
The seismic upheaval has forced Trump and the Republicans to quickly recalibrate, and they appear to be trying to settle into the line of attack.
Over the past week, Trump has falsely accused the vice president of being anti-Semitic — despite her decade-long marriage to a Jewish man, fellow gentleman Doug Emhoff — and outrageously claimed she supports infanticide.
The Harris campaign condemned Trump’s remarks Wednesday as “personal attacks and insults” and the latest example of “the same hostility he has displayed throughout his life.”
Trump and Republicans launched more traditional political attacks, highlighting Harris’ key positions on the positions she took as she sought to carve out a lane in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential race.
Harris no longer supports the repeal of private health insurance or the government’s gun buyback scheme. She also distanced herself from anti-fracking and pro-expansion Supreme Court positions.
“San Francisco liberal @VP Kamala Harris can’t decide where she stands on the most basic issues,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin wrote on X.
“They’ll be after her,” he said.
The messaging appears to have had little impact, as Harris has erased Trump’s lead in several key battleground states in the days since he became the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
On Saturday, Trump will head to Atlanta, Georgia, where he will campaign alongside candidate J.D. Vance.
The 39-year-old senator from Ohio was once a staunch critic of Trump, but has changed his tune and become one of his most vocal supporters.
Since Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate, a series of videos have surfaced of controversial statements from the past, including one in which he mocks some Democratic women as “childless cat ladies.”
Harris is traveling to Houston, Texas, later Wednesday to address a rally of African-American students.
