Sen. J.D Vance, when questioned by a CNN reporter about whether he, as the father of three biracial children, was taken aback by Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’ racial identity by demanding to know whether she is Indian “or” Black, endorsed the former president’s answer and said his comments were “totally reasonable.”
“They don’t give me pause at all,” Vance told reporter Steve Contorno during an interview near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
Trump’s running mate has three children with his wife, Usha Vance, who was born in California to Indian immigrants.
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When pressed, he added: “Look, all [Trump] said is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon.”
“She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of. I think it’s totally reasonable for the president to call that out, and that’s all he did,” said Vance, who also accused Harris of putting on a southern accent during a campaign stop in Atlanta on Tuesday.
When Contorno confronted Vance with his past criticisms of Trump and other comments that don’t square with his current attitudes, Vance dismissed the idea that he also “pretends to be somebody different,” as he had described Harris.
“It’s reasonable to change your mind,” Vance said. “It’s not reasonable to run and hide from the media and not answer the American people’s questions.”
Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention in Chicago on Wednesday drew bipartisan condemnation. It came even after GOP House leaders had been pushing for Republicans to stop talking about Harris’ race.
But Trump couldn’t help himself.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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, adding that “somebody should look into” her racial identity.
Harris briefly mentioned Trump’s racist attack later that day.
“It was the same old show—the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better,” Harris said in Houston. “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, not a leader who responds with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
The White House similarly called Trump’s comments “repulsive.”
Harris’s mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican, and each, like Usha Vance’s parents, immigrated to the U.S.
Trump’s running mate, while traveling to Arizona on Wednesday, didn’t seem to have a problem with Trump’s characterization of Harris’ race. Instead, he told reporters on the plane, “I frankly just think it’s hysterical how much the media is overreacting to it.”
He added later, according to NOTUS: “So what [Trump] said, I thought it was hysterical. I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris.”
“She’s flip-flopped on every issue. She’s fake. She’s phony. And I think our whole campaign is going to have a very fun time pointing that out,” Vance predicted. “And it sounds like the president kicked us off in stride.”
