Trump Doubles Down on “Kamala Isn’t Black” Argument With New Photo

In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Donald Trump appeared to suggest, again, that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isn’t really Black, ramping up his identity-based attacks to the horror of those in his party who consider racism a losing electoral strategy.

Earlier in the week, many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender—which seemed all but inevitable considering Trump’s history of racism and misogyny—would pose a serious liability for the campaign. “We hope he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can’t control him,” a source close to the campaign told The Washington Post.

These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

Politifact noted this was a “false mischaracterization of Harris’ background and how she has spoken about, and identified with, her race and ethnicity.” Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Black, has “embraced her Black identity and multicultural background in several ways.”

By Wednesday evening, many Republicans were dismayed. One House Republican told Axios the interview “was not a demonstration on how to win over undecided voters,” and another said it “raised concerns about whether Trump can contain his impulses.”

But Trump dug in his heels again on Truth Social Thursday morning, posting a family photo in which a young Kamala Harris wore a sari, with the snide caption, “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.”

Commenting on Trump’s obstinate commitment to mocking Harris’s biracial background, political analyst and X user ettingermentum wrote, “How does he even theoretically see this helping him,” and commentator Tim Miller sarcastically posted, “Gotta say I am extremely impressed with the strategic discipline that [Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita] has brought to this campaign. I doubted the punditry that indicated Trump could be tamed … but the proof is in the pudding.”

A former Trump aide has accused Donald Trump of falsely identifying as Swedish, following his outlandish claim that Vice President Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” despite being “always of Indian heritage.”

Omarosa Manigault Newman called out Trump during an appearance on CNN’s Laura Coates Live Wednesday night, saying that she distinctly remembered him identifying as Swedish, “because he didn’t want to acknowledge that his father was German and his mother was Irish, and he thought that that would play better to those who were patronizing his businesses.”

“So can we call the question, his past of self-identifying as first Swedish, then German, and then Irish whenever it’s convenient?”

“Donald doesn’t know the difference between ancestry and race. He doesn’t want to know the differences, nor does he understand the nuances of how people self-identify. And so, I believe that that’s disqualifying for him,” Newman said.

Trump’s grandfather, Frederich, came to New York City from Kallstadt, Germany, according to The Daily Beast. Trump’s father then lied about having Swedish heritage, so that he could more easily sell apartments to Jewish tenants in the aftermath of World War II, according to The Boston Globe.

That lie made its way into Trump’s 1987 bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, where he wrote that his grandfather “came here from Sweden as a child.” It was only when the Trump family received a request from a Swedish organization to put up an exhibit about the family in one of their museums, that it was time to give up the charade. When Trump wrote his next book 13 years later, it correctly identified that his grandfather had come from Germany.

While Newman identified Trump’s mother as Irish, she was Scottish by birth.

As many other Republicans criticized Donald Trump for questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’s race on Wednesday, Senator Tom Cotton took a different tack and defended the former president and convicted felon.

On CNN Wednesday, Kaitlan Collins asked the Arkansas senator if Trump’s comments were defensible, and he said yes.

“Kaitlan, of course,” Cotton said. “First off, it’s refreshing to see a presidential candidate who’s willing to go in front of the media, something that Donald Trump knew would be a tough interview. It turned out to be a hostile, adversarial interview, but he’s been doing that for nine years. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has been hiding out for the 10 days that she’s been a president nominee.”

Cotton attacked Harris as a “San Francisco liberal,” saying she had not granted any interviews since President Biden stepped down from the 2024 election and endorsed her for president.

“Yeah, I didn’t hear Donald Trump bring up any of her policy positions today or stances when he was on that stage,” Collins followed up. “But your argument is that just because she hasn’t done an interview since she became the top of the ticket, that it’s OK to question what her race is?”

Cotton denied Collins’s assertion.

“Kaitlan, if you didn’t hear Donald Trump talking about her positions and his record, then you didn’t watch the interview. It went on for 30 minutes,” Cotton said.

“The vast majority of it, Kaitlan, was Donald Trump talking about his record, contrasting it to the Biden-Harris record of higher inflation and wide-open borders and war and chaos around the world,” Cotton added.

Throughout the interview, Collins tried to press Cotton to address Trump’s comments, but the Arkansas senator continued to deflect.

“We have talked about her past positions and the reversals of those,” Collins said. “And we’ve delved into all of that. That’s actually what voters care about. But when your party’s nominee is on stage telling a panel of three Black women that the first Black woman to serve as vice president hasn’t always identified as Black, how does that help your party win elections?”

“Donald Trump said that what matters is that she identifies as a dangerous San Francisco liberal. It’s not what race she identifies as,” Cotton replied.

It’s not surprising that Cotton would be one of the few senators to publicly jump to Trump’s defense, considering his own record on race. In 2020, he called for invoking the Insurrection Act and sending in federal troops to crush Black Lives Matter demonstrations. That same year, he claimed that America’s Founding Fathers saw slavery as a “necessary evil upon which the union was built.”

But Cotton is out of step with many of his Republican colleagues, and if he and the rest of the GOP who are defending Trump’s remarks think that the former president will emerge unscathed, they are in for a reckoning, especially considering Trump already has minuscule Black support.

As reports emerge suggesting some Trump allies regret Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, who has made an abysmal first impression in the public eye, many in the campaign suspect former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway of maligning Vance to the media.

The Bulwark reports that over a dozen “​​Trump campaign staffers, allies, confidants, and advisers” said, without being prompted, that they thought Conway “was undermining him through leaks to the press expressing doubts about his readiness and the campaign’s vetting.”

“He’s pissed off about it. He knows it’s her,” a source close to Donald Trump Jr. told the center-right news site.

Conway was rumored to be a “serial leaker” during Trump’s presidency, and, as his “veepstakes” were underway, she opposed Vance. The New York Times reports that, as the Ohio senator emerged as the favorite, Conway “argued privately” for “other options,” like Marco Rubio.

Maintaining her loyalty and close relationship to the former president, Conway called her accusers “gossip girls” and “ankle biters,” telling The Bulwark that she did favor Rubio but is “not anti-Vance.” A member of the Trump family reportedly said, “The family in general thinks very highly” of her.

When the Republican “veepstakes” were still underway, Conway told CNN that Trump should choose somebody who would not be “a distraction or subtraction,” saying he “should not be made to explain other people’s scandals or statements.” Whatever their thoughts of Conway, such advice is surely ringing in the ears of Trump and his allies as they are having to do just that.

J.D. Vance got slammed by X users after accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of being fake.

“Kamala Harris is a phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her,” Vance said, during a rally speech in Glendale, Arizona, Wednesday night.

“She went down to Georgia and started with a fake Southern accent. I’m serious, now, what the hell was all that about? Kamala Harris grew up in Canada! They don’t talk like that in Vancouver or Quebec or wherever she came from,” Vance said.

The line of argument seemed like a weak chaser for Donald Trump’s shot at Harris earlier that day, questioning his opponent’s Blackness in a room full of Black journalists.

Of course, from someone like Vance, with his history of stretching the truth and making flip-flopping statements, no one on the internet was buying it.

There were the easy hits, about Vance’s ever-changing name and where he grew up.

Vance has seemingly changed his name a few times, from James Donald Bowman, to James David Hamel, and finally to Vance around 2013, according to Vanity Fair.

As for the Ohio senator’s supposed Appalachian roots—which he capitalized on in his bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy—where he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, is not within the Appalachian region defined by Congress.

But then, there’s the more pressing stuff, like what Vance purports to actually believe. Vance went from being a self-proclaimed “never-Trump guy,” to being Trump’s running mate, in just a few years.

In an attempt to appeal to Trump voters, it seems that Vance is already capturing the very essence of Trump, who rarely casts an accusation that’s not also an admission.