Asked whether Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee because she is a Black woman, Donald Trump said Harris “happened to turn Black” after “she was always of Indian heritage.” Harris is Black and South Asian.
Trump made the remarks at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago during an interview with Semafor’s Kadia Goba, ABC News’ Rachel Scott, and Fox News’ Harris Faulkner.
The former president offered no evidence for his false implication that Harris was hiding something about her ethnic background. She is a graduate of Howard University, the most famous of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities.
“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,” he said. “So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”
He added that: “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 went —she became Black. Somebody should look into that.”