Republicans were on the defensive after GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity in front of a group of Black journalists, drawing condemnations on both sides of the aisle.
In interviews on Wednesday, Republican senators ducked, dodged, or downplayed Trump’s comments about the first Black and South Asian woman to serve as vice president.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, “Of course,” Trump’s comments were defensible during an interview on CNN in which he spent the vast majority of time bringing up things the former president didn’t bring up himself in Chicago, such as Harris’ progressive policy positions she has shed since becoming the de facto Democratic nominee for president.
“He also said, either is fine, both is fine,” Cotton said of Trump. “He loves African Americans, he loves Indian Americans, he loves all Americans. The point is, we don’t know where she stands politically.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump’s comments are often “misconstrued” and he should be more careful about discussing race because they often lack nuance.
“I don’t think he’s doubting her Blackness,” Cramer said. “What he’s doing is he’s making fun of the fact that she chooses it when it’s convenient, and chooses another race when that’s convenient.”
Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants and has always identified as a Black woman.
Other Republicans said that their party should stick to talking about Democrats’ record on the economy, border security and national security ― just about anything but race and gender.
“We focus on that we win. We shift focus away from it, we start losing,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said of Harris’ policy positions.
“The president speaks for himself, and I speak for myself,” added Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), declining to state whether Trump’s comments about Harris were appropriate. “My concern is her positions… I think her record helps Republicans win.”
At Wednesday’s convention for Black journalists in Chicago, ABC News congressional correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump whether his supporters should keep calling Harris a “DEI hire,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“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 said about Harris, the first Black woman vice president who attended Howard, a historically Black university.
Trump has a long record of making racist statements and questioning his opponents’ racial identities, suggesting they are somehow un-American. He was a prominent backer of the “birther” movement that baselessly cast doubt on former President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, promoted the false claims that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Harris might not be a U.S. citizen, and also falsely suggested former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley couldn’t run for president because she wasn’t born in the U.S., even though she was born in South Carolina.
Trump’s attacks on Harris’s racial identity were preceded by several other outrageous comments this week. He agreed with a radio host that Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, is “a crappy Jew” and said that Harris “dislikes Jewish people even more than [President Joe Biden] did.”
At a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday night, Trump again attacked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) over his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that Schumer “has become a Palestinian.” He then falsely said that the senator “has become a proud member of Hamas,” the terrorist militant group.
“The lower he drops in polls, the more unhinged he becomes,” Schumer responded in a statement provided to HuffPost.
Maryland Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan, the state’s former governor, also condemned Trump’s comments about Harris without directly referring to the former president by his name.
“It’s unacceptable and abhorrent to attack Vice President Harris or anyone’s racial identity. The American people deserve better,” Hogan wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who is just about the only elected GOP official willing to publicly criticize Trump these days, also lamented the state of the campaign.
“If you’ll recall, in the previous election, you had former President Trump questioning [Barack] Obama’s citizenship… Again, it’s unfortunate these are the issues being raised,” Murkowski told reporters.
“Maybe they don’t know how to handle the campaign,” she added, “so they default to issues that simply should not be an issue.”
