Former US President Donald Trump has ridiculed Vice President Kamala Harris for talking up her Indian heritage for years until she “all of a sudden…became a black person.” The White House lashed out at Trump in response, stating that the former president has no “right to tell someone who they are.”
Trump commented on Harris’ race during a combative panel interview at a National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday. Asked whether he considered Harris a “DEI hire” – someone hired for their race or gender, Trump replied that he thinks the situation “is maybe a little bit different.”
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“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he elaborated. “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. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”
“You know what, 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, she became a black person,” Trump continued, to laughter from the audience.
Born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris is often described as the US’ first African American and first Asian American vice president. Around the time of her election to the US Senate in 2016, some American media outlets including the Associated Press, The Hill, and local newspaper the Sacramento Bee described her as “Indian-American,” while others, including ABC and NBC, described her as “African-American.”
Both descriptors were used interchangeably by the media during Harris’ time in the Senate, and during her abortive presidential campaign in 2019.
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In a 2020 post on X marking India’s independence day, Harris described Indians as “our people.”
Responding to Trump on social media, Harris accused her Republican opponent of peddling “divisiveness and disrespect.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Trump’s remarks “repulsive and insulting.”
Nobody “has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no-one’s right,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday.
Seemingly undeterred by this condemnation, Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Friday to share a photograph of a young Harris and her family in traditional Indian dress. “Thank you Kamala for the nice picture you sent from many years ago! Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated,” he wrote.