Hours after Donald Trump spewed a racist attack on Kamala Harris and echoed his past birtherism of former President Barack Obama by demanding that “somebody should look into” her ethnicity, the vice president summed up his contentious exchange Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists: “It was the same old show.”
At an event for Sigma Gamma Rho, a Black sorority, in Houston, Harris’ mention of the GOP presidential nominee’s outburst was brief yet to the point.
“It was the same old show—the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better,” she said to applause. “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.”
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In a press release earlier Wednesday, the Harris campaign expanded on this point, saying in part: “Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”
“It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10,” it concluded, alluding to how Trump pulled out of a debate that he had agreed to against Biden.
Trump—whose comments Wednesday came as polls show a much tighter race than they did with Biden running for re-election—didn’t repeat his earlier lines during a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hours later. Instead, he argued that Harris’ campaign lacks authenticity.
“Everything about Kamala Harris rollout—it’s phony and it’s fake,” he claimed.
Elsewhere over the airwaves Wednesday, Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended his bizarre remarks about Harris having “turned Black.”
Trump, she said on News Nation, was showing “honesty.”
