Trump Goes on Truly Deranged Rant About “Black Jobs” as Crowd Boos Him

Donald Trump addressed a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday where he was asked to explain his earlier words about “Black jobs.” His answer didn’t clear anything up.

Trump was initially asked by Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, who sat on the panel along with Rachel Scott of ABC News and Kadia Goba of Semafor, what his message was at the event. He began by talking about the so-called crisis at the U.S. southern border.

“A lot of the journalists in this room I know and I have great respect for, a lot of the journalists in this room are Black,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the audience. “I will tell you that coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs.”

“What exactly is a Black job, sir?” Scott asked him.

“A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is. Anybody that has a job,” Trump said to more laughter from the audience. “They’re taking the employment away from Black people.”

Trump initially used the phrase during the first presidential debate in June and was heavily criticized, with many people asking what a “Black job” is and what he meant. Several Black politicians posted on social media at the time highlighting their work.

Given an opportunity by Black journalists with a largely Black audience Wednesday, Trump didn’t clarify anything. His campaign has made repeated efforts to draw in Black voters, only for those efforts to seemingly fail “bigly,” according to recent polls. This is partly because Trump’s campaign has also included some not-so-subtle racist messages, including his vow to fight “anti-white” racism, his pledge to “indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials” if he’s reelected, his attacks on Black prosecutors, and his defense of “very fine” neo-Nazis.

Even before he entered politics, Trump didn’t have a good record on race. He and his father were sued for housing discrimination back in the 1970s, and while he hosted NBC’s The Apprentice, he allegedly dropped the n-word and refused to hire Kwame Jackson, the Black finalist on the show’s first season. However Trump’s appearance at the NABJ’s convention Wednesday was going to go, it could never have erased his racist past.

The United Auto Workers announced Wednesday that their union would endorse Kamala Harris for president.

The union’s executive board came to the decision because of “the Biden-Harris administration’s proven track record of standing with the UAW and delivering major gains for the working class,” according to a press release from the union.

“Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class,” said UAW President Shawn Fain in the statement. “We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.”

Following President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Harris, many unions, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW, and the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, rushed to back Harris. But the UAW held off.

Fain even took heat when he appeared on MSNBC to say his union was “not going to rush” its Harris endorsement without the approval of the union members. The union had previously endorsed Biden in January.

In the UAW’s announcement, the union cited Harris’s commitment to workers on the picket line and in her voting records. “Kamala Harris walked the picket line with striking autoworkers in 2019, has taken on corporate price-gouging and profiteering, and has spoken out and voted against unfair trade deals that hurt the American worker like NAFTA and NAFTA 2.0, the USMCA,” the statement said.

Harris will head to Detroit on August 7 to rally with UAW members and Michigan voters. During that time, she will also meet directly with union members about the issues facing Michigan workers.

“This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box,” said Fain. “For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next President this November.”

Former President Donald Trump suggested Vice President Kamala Harris had suddenly turned Black, during an interview Wednesday at a convention for the National Association of Black Journalists.

Trump appeared onstage more than an hour late to take part in a conversation conducted by ABC News’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, and Semafor’s political reporter Kadia Goba.

Scott didn’t hold back when it came to asking Trump about his party’s attacks on Harris as a “DEI” candidate. “Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?” Scott asked.

“Well, I can say no, I think it’s maybe a little bit different,” Trump said. “I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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?” Trump asked, noting that he’d respect “either one.”

“She was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said. The audience let out a collective gasp and incredulous laughs. He went on to criticize Scott for her “hostile, nasty tone,” before turning his attention to fawn over Faulkner.

As the interview proceeded, Trump was simultaneously fact-checked online in collaboration with Politifact. The slogan of the weekend’s convention was “Winds of Change: Journalism Over Disinformation.”

Before the interview started, Trump posted on Truth Social, whining that he had to attend the event in Chicago, while Harris had opted to attend virtually.

“They told me and Crazy Kamala Harris that you could not do this Event with ZOOM—It is not allowed or acceptable! She declined, and I am getting ready to land in Chicago in order to be there. Now I am told that she is doing the Event on ZOOM,” Trump wrote. “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”

Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.

Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.

“It’s the worst vice presidential pick of my lifetime,” said CNN’s Harry Enten. Last week, coming out of the Republican National Convention, Vance had a negative six-point favorability rating that has more than doubled this week. According to the Enten, the senator is the first vice presidential candidate to average a net negative favorability rating.

Enten is only 36, so he expanded the range a little bit: He posited that Vance was the worst vice presidential candidate since 1972, when George McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton.

“He got replaced,” Enten noted of Eagleton.

During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.

“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.

Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator.

After one of the heads of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down on Tuesday, there was an immediate backlash from the right against Trump campaign staff.

The conservative manifesto has drawn a lot of criticism and attacks from Democrats, with Trump even taking issue with some of its extreme policy items, particularly its restrictions on abortion rights. But several right-wing personalities are directing their aim at Trump advisers for pushing out Dans, concerned that the move is a signal Trump is abandoning the project.

Mike Cernovich specifically targeted Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s campaign managers, in several posts on X (formerly Twitter).

Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist, and Chris Lonsdale, a Missouri state representative, also jumped in to attack Trump staff. 

The gleeful email that LaCivita and Trump’s other campaign manager, Susie Wiles, sent out Tuesday celebrating “Project 2025’s demise” appears to have provoked anger from many on the right. They are refusing to believe reports that Trump himself is annoyed that the project has received so much attention, or that he resents the implication that the project is behind his policies and choosing his presidential staff.

None of this can change the fact that Trump and his campaign have extensive ties to Project 2025. Vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance even wrote the foreword to a book by one of its lead architects, Kevin Roberts, who was very happy when Trump chose Vance as his running mate. Meanwhile, all of the infighting over how much influence the project actually has will only make Republicans look weirder.