Republicans in Panic Mode After Trump’s “Awful” Comment on Kamala

Republicans are freaking out after Donald Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s race on Wednesday.

At the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump claimed that Harris chose to suddenly “turn” Black.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said, responding to a question on the right calling her a “DEI hire.” “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black.

“I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump asked, and then said, “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 and she went—she became a Black person.”

According to Axios, several Republicans think Trump’s words were crazy.

“It was awful,” one House Republican told the publication. They said it called into question if Trump can control his words against the first woman, Black, and Asian American vice president.

“Maybe they don’t know how to handle the campaign, and so you default to issues that just should simply not be an issue,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski. She pointed out that it’s only the latest misstep by the Trump campaign.

“Childless cat women, DEI candidates; now, ‘Is she Black? Is she Indian?’” Murkowski said.

Another House Republican said, “That was not a demonstration on how to win over undecided voters.”

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan called out Trump’s comments on X (formerly Twitter) without mentioning him by name.

Several Republicans, including one senator who usually doesn’t shy from such discussions, thought the focus should be on Harris’s policies.

“I ain’t getting involved in that,” said Tommy Tuberville. “Let him talk about what he wants to talk about. I’m talking about how bad our country is in shape right now because of her.”

“I think the better approach is to focus on [the] policies of Kamala Harris.… That’s what I’ve been talking about,” said Senator Steve Daines, the Senate GOP’s campaign chief.

Trump made a number of unwise comments at the NABJ convention Wednesday, including his comments on Harris’s race and cognitive health, his use of the term “Black jobs,” or his vow to pardon January 6 rioters. Strangely, he thinks he nailed his appearance there, perhaps further evidence of his own cognitive decline.

After getting booed, laughed at, and fact-checked, Donald Trump decided he had had enough of his Wednesday interview and left early. 

At a National Association of Black Journalists event in Chicago, the former president was slated to speak for an hour. Despite starting more than an hour late, allegedly due to technical difficulties, moderators began the discussion with Trump by thanking him for agreeing to still speak for the full hour. 

Their thanks were premature, however, as Trump only spoke for 34 minutes. Moderator Rachel Scott indicated that Trump’s team cut things off. 

The awkward affair was riddled with tense moments and shouts from the audience. Throughout the interview, Scott and fellow moderator Kadia Goba displayed  incredible professionalism—and Trump, of course, showed none. 

The Republican presidential candidate spent his time interrupting people, questioning Kamala Harris’s Blackness, trying and failing to explain what “Black jobs” are, and promising to pardon January 6 rioters. 

Immediately following the event, Trump took to TruthSocial to gloat about his performance and complain about the event overall. “The questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement,” he wrote. 

Despite his poor performance and early exit, Trump said he “CRUSHED IT!” 

Donald Trump’s social media venture is losing users every month, hurting his bottom line and possibly showing that his rhetoric is losing appeal even among his own base.

The Guardian spoke to a right-wing media analyst, Howard Polskin, who said that Truth Social had only 2.11 million unique users in June, a decline of 38 percent from one year ago.

“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Ploskin said.

Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, had experienced a jump in its stock price of $46 per share after a gunman tried to kill Trump earlier this month. But those gains appear to have been short-lived, as the stock dropped to about $29 per share Wednesday. Both numbers are nowhere near the peak price this year, which was close to $72 per share in March after its initial public offering.

The venture was supposed to be Trump’s cash cow, as the former president and convicted felon owns 60 percent of the company. But a series of setbacks since launching have ruined Trump’s financial fail-safe. The company had a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023, numbers that had to be reaudited after its accounting firm was charged with “massive fraud” and subsequently barred from ever serving as accountants again. The company lost an astonishing $327.6 million last quarter, only bringing in $770,500 in revenue.

Trump can’t brag his way out of Trump Media’s declining stock value, as pumping up the stock is illegal. He can’t try to dump the stock until September without board approval, either, and while he’s been given a reprieve from his legal cases by the Supreme Court, he still has legal bills to pay. But all he can do is watch Trump Media’s stock price continue to go nowhere, or come up with another grift with which he can fleece his supporters.

Donald Trump doubled down on a frightening campaign promise Wednesday.

While at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference in Chicago, Trump was asked if he would pardon rioters who assaulted police officers during the January 6 insurrection.

“Oh, absolutely I would,” Trump replied while interrupting the moderators. “If they are innocent, I would pardon them.”

“They’ve been convicted,” Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, quickly clarified, to which the crowd interrupted in laughter.

Trump previously has called the violent insurrectionists “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” He has promised several times over to “free” the rioters, despite saying on the day after the Capitol attack that “those who broke the law” would “pay.”

But he changed tune just a year later. “We’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons,” Trump said in 2022. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”

At Wednesday’s event, Trump tried to redirect the conversation to left-wing rioters in Minneapolis and Seattle while justifying the violence of January 6. When pressed by Scott about the acts of individuals pummeling police officers in what was likely the largest single-day assault on law enforcement, Trump justified the insurrectionists’ actions by simply saying the officers “shot a young lady in the face.”

Donald Trump made an outlandish claim Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris had failed the bar exam, while challenging her to take a cognitive test.

During an interview at the convention for the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump responded to a question from Semafor’s political reporter Kadia Goba, who asked if he would be willing to take a cognitive exam.

“I would love to do it,” Trump said, brushing past Goba’s follow-up about releasing the results. Instead, Trump said he had pushed to take a cognitive test with Joe Biden, and said the same offer applied to his new, far younger opponent.

“I would do it with her also. You know what? She failed her law exam, she didn’t pass her law exam, so maybe she wouldn’t pass the cognitive test,” Trump said shrugging.

The audience instantly burst into noisy chatter. “Oh—” someone said into the microphone, cringing at the outrageous claim. Another person went “pfft” into the microphone.

“Are you saying she wouldn’t pass?” asked ABC News’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, whom Trump repeatedly scolded throughout the interview.

“I’m just giving you the facts,” Trump insisted. “She didn’t pass her bar exam. And she didn’t think she would pass it, and she didn’t think she was gonna ever pass it. And I don’t know what happened, maybe she passed it.”

Scott asserted, as the president spoke over her, that Harris had, of course, passed the bar. That much can be assumed from someone who served as the Los Angeles County district attorney and attorney general of California.