After recently questioning Kamala Harris’ racial identity and saying she “happened to turn Black” years ago, Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate said he doesn’t care how Harris identifies herself.
Asked by debate moderator David Muir of NBC News why he thinks it’s appropriate to weigh in on Harris’ racial identity, Trump responded, “I don’t and I don’t care.
“You make a big deal out of something — I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “I don’t care what she is. I don’t care.”
Muir said he was only using Trump’s own words after Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee: “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.”
Harris is Black and South Asian; her father, Donald Harris, is from Jamaica and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was from India.
“Whatever she wants to be, it’s OK with me,” Trump said.
“All I could say is I read where she said she was not Black. And then I read that she was black, and that’s OK.”
Harris suggested Trump’s comments about her racial identity were part of a pattern of the former president’s using race to sow division.
“I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consitently … used race to divide the American people,” she said. “We don’t want his kind of approach that is constantly trying to divide us on race.”
Harris then attacked Trump’s record on race as a real estate developer in New York City.
“He was investigated because he refused to rent properties to Black families,” she said.
“Let’s remember this is the same individual who put out a full-page ad in The New York Times” calling on the Central Park Five to be executed. The Central Park Five were Black and Latino joggers falsely accused of raping and attacked a white female jogger, Harris continued.
“This is the same individual who spread birther lies about the first Black president of the United States, and I think the American people want better than that …” she said.
