Washington, DC – Donald Trump is facing a fierce backlash for questioning the race of US election rival Kamala Harris, but to those acquainted with the Republican’s long history of inflammatory language and behavior around the issue, the smear was nothing new.
Trump’s political career was forged in the cauldron of the 2010s “birther” conspiracy theory that sought to delegitimize then president Barack Obama — who had a Kenyan father — by claiming falsely that he was born abroad.
Those who say Trump is racist point to dozens of other controversies the property tycoon has stoked, from being sued in the 1970s for discrimination against Black tenants to his notorious pandering to white supremacist marchers in 2017.
Trump’s worst impulses resurfaced Wednesday with his outlandish claim that Harris — the first female and non-white vice president — recently “became a Black person” for political convenience.
Like an estimated 34 million Americans in the nation’s fastest-growing demographic, Harris is mixed race and has been consistent in celebrating her Black and South Asian identity.
The attack handed Trump back a media spotlight that had evaded him since Harris’s game-changing entry into the White House race, but it also honed attention on his extensive record of racial transgressions.
“He did crap the bed… The only question is whether he’s going to roll around in it or get up and change the sheets,” veteran strategist Scott Jennings, a onetime aide to former President George W. Bush, told CNN.
Trump’s inflammatory comments came amid a barrage of insults and falsehoods as he attacked Harris during a combative interaction with African American journalists in Chicago.
The 78-year-old is desperate to woo Black voters from Harris — who has erased his polling leads since jumping into the race — but the invitation was already controversial, given his well-documented history of denigrating Black female reporters. AFP
