Republicans scrambled as they tried to defend former president Donald Trump’s racist lies about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump, at an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists last week, launched a racist attack against Harris by falsely accusing her of misrepresenting her racial background. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black… So I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black? 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 became a Black person.”
Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance, who has three mixed-race children, applauded and doubled down on the attack: “I thought it was hysterical. I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris,” Vance said Wednesday.
GOP Rep. Byron Donalds, who himself is the father of mixed-race children, called Trump’s comments a “phony controversy,” saying on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, “I don’t really care, most people don’t.” But Donalds then went on to repeat Trump’s slur against Harris’ racial identity and lie about an Associated Press (AP) story from when Harris was first elected to the Senate.
“When Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the first Indian American United States senator,” Donalds said. “It was actually played up a lot when she came into the Senate. Now she’s running nationally, obviously the campaign has shifted. They’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity. It doesn’t really matter. The [former] president barely mentioned it.”
What the AP actually wrote is this: “Harris will enter the chamber as the first Indian woman elected to a Senate seat and the second Black woman, following Carol Moseley Braun, who served a single term after being elected in 1992.” (Emphasis added.)
Donalds went on to obfuscate and blame Harris for “massive inflation” and “her failure as border czar” even though Republican claims that Harris was Biden’s “border czar” have been labeled misleading by fact checkers.
But George Stephanopoulos did not let Donalds get away with lying about Harris’ racial background. “You just repeated the slur again. If it doesn’t matter, why do you all keep questioning her identity? She’s always identified as a Black woman. She is biracial. She has a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. She’s always identified as both. Why are you questioning that?”
“This is something that’s actually a conversation throughout social media right now,” Donalds dodged. “A lot of people are trying to figure this out.”
“Sir, one second, you just did it again! Why do you insist on questioning her racial identity?” Stephanopoulos asked indignantly.
This racist talking point was debunked long ago. In 2020, the AP ran a fact check that ruled these claims are false. “Kamala Harris for years has identified herself as both Black and Indian American,” the AP’s Amanda Seitz wrote. “In interviews, she has regularly talked about how her mother, who was from India, raised her as Black.”
“George, now that you’re done yelling at me, let me answer,” Donalds testily fired back at Stephanopoulos. The MAGA congressman again pivoted away from the question to say that Trump spent time attacking Harris’ record at his Saturday rally (during which the former president also perpetuated lies about election fraud and cheered the appointment of MAGA loyalists to the Georgia State Election Board.)
“I know you guys like to glom onto this that he talks about in jest or in a serious manner for about a minute or so, but what you do not cover is the litany of failures of Kamala Harris,” Donalds said.
“So questioning someone’s racial identity for two minutes is OK?” Stephanopoulos responded.
Donalds again falsely claimed the AP “brought… up” the claims that Harris is the first Indian senator to be elected in the Senate, repeatedly neglecting that they also in the very same sentence called her the “second Black woman” elected to a Senate seat. “None of this matters to the American people,” Donalds added.
“If it doesn’t matter,” Stephanopolous replied, “I don’t understand why you keep on repeating it, why the [former] president keeps on repeating it, why those introducing the [former] president yesterday keep on repeating it.”
“George, actually, I’m not the one who keeps repeating it. George, you’re the one that’s bringing it up now,” Donalds replied.
“Sir, you’ve done it three times. Every single answer you gave me — now let me finish, sir — every single answer you gave, you repeated the slur,” Stephanopoulos said.
Donalds then tried to get Stephanopoulos to change the subject, but the anchor continued: “AP did not say that Kamala Harris is not Black. She is biracial. She is Indian. She is Black. You continue to repeat the… slur. I don’t understand why you and the [former] president do it, but it’s clear you’re not gonna say that it’s wrong, and you’ve now established that for our audience.”
“Let’s move on,” Donalds pleaded after five minutes of back-and-forth.
Over on on CBS’s Face the Nation, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton got off comparatively easy when he was asked about these attacks on Harris by Ed O’Keefe.
“Are you personally OK with him questioning whether she’s Black?” O’Keefe asked Cotton.
“Ed, he wasn’t saying what matters is how she identifies as her race,” Cotton said. “He explicitly said he didn’t care. One was fine. The other was fine. Both was fine. She identifies as a dangerous San Francisco liberal. That’s the danger to the American people.”
“Let’s move on to other things,” O’Keefe said, allowing Cotton to get away with his lie.
But Republicans should have to face up to the harmful, vile racist falsehoods being spewed by their party’s candidate, especially because they are part of the Trump campaign’s broader strategy. Sources told Rolling Stone that Trump and his aides have planned these race-baiting attacks, despite House Republican leadership begging its members to avoid the topic of Harris’ race, according to Politico.
“It’s not by accident; it’s intentional,” a person close to Trump told Rolling Stone of the attacks. “We’re behind the [former] president, 100 percent.”
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.