12mo ago

Trump Doubles Down on “Kamala Isn’t Black” Argument With New Photo

Donald Trump is proving he’s racist and stupid with his latest post.

In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Donald Trump appeared to suggest, again, that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isn’t really Black, ramping up his identity-based attacks to the horror of those in his party who consider racism a losing electoral strategy.

Earlier in the week, many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender—which seemed all but inevitable considering Trump’s history of racism and misogyny—would pose a serious liability for the campaign. “We hope he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can’t control him,” a source close to the campaign told The Washington Post.

These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”

176 comments

Just how dumb is this guy?
- Whatever the answer to that question is, the real answer is "dumber than that."
  
  Also acceptable: not as dumb as the people who vote for him.
- He's a not really that dumb, he's a narcissist. Like, as a legitimate, detrimental mental condition.
  Trump cannot backtrack and admit he is wrong, even if it's a small goof. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy
  I know people like this in real life, and it's really sad, but also really annoying/grating.
  
  To be fair, he’s ALSO very dumb: https://www.truthorfiction.com/trump-was-the-dumbest-gddamn-student/
  
  But also dumb
- His VP pick has children who are both white and Indian, but he still can't comprehend Harris can be black and Indian.
  
  To be fair, Trump and most of the MAGA base probably don't view the Vance kids as white at all.
- He's "look directly at the sun during an eclipse without eye protection" dumb. Plus he's old, sleepy, and a felon.
- More predictable than dumb, in that in any given situation the man will pick the absolutely worst choice available. Every single time. Even when that choice hurts him.
  When his options are (a) pick the right choice, (b) pick a bad choice, ( c) do nothing, or (d) pick something you didn't even fathom because the idea was just so bad that even the biggest moron would dismiss it out of hand, he will go with D. Every single time. Even if it hurts himself. Thankfully, the man can't get out of his own way 95% of the time, and I firmly believe that making even something resembling a rational choice even on the most basic of options would cause him physical pain.
- Profoundly dumb. But also super weird. And he hates being called weird.
  
  Weird, Old, Loser, Fat...the alpha W.O.L.F.
- He's starting a rhetoric. He gaslights and soon there'll be a bunch of Americans caught up in her origins and misleading representation of race. And you'll wonder, "How the fuck did that actually stick?"
  
  Will there? Maybe the racist ones who would never be voting for her anyway. Good, let them waste their time with it.
  
  Yep, it's just the new talking point from their supreme leader. It was "Sleepy Biden" before, now it's "opportunistic race swapping Harris" (he is better with stupid names so he might come up with something more catchy, but that is the general direction).
  They will gobble it up like all the shit they parrot all the time.
- It's just a weird thing to say and a weird stance to double-down on.
- Dude literally doesn’t understand that people come from two parents
- How dumb is there?
  
  All of it...just all the dumb
- No, he's legitimately dumb. He knows how to play a crowd, and covers it up a bit by rambling unlike Biden, but he's been observably senile since like 2018, look at how disconnected his speech gets when he goes off script and starts a thought off with something he half-remembered from the news, something grandma would send you on FB, and ends it with something that hasn't been accurate since the 80s.
  If you watch his CPAC speeches and stuff, it's almost like there's a conspiracy of silence around showing how bad it is. You just get wacky stories that aren't too believable from dem-alligned media, and "everything's fine, the 79 year old is the most stable genius ever" from conservative media.
  The recent interview with the black journalists association missed the perfect opportunity to ask him to draw a clock.
- This is what we call an "n+1" problem, as far as I can tell
- If you know you might lose a fair fight, but you also know it doesn't matter if you can leverage mob violence, you stoke the flames.
  
  He has to be careful with that or his supporters might not be energized to vote.
  Oh how the turntables
I honestly think the more likely explanation is that he doesn't realize Kamala Harris and Nikki Hayley are different people. They're both just "that woman I'm running against" to him.
- If that's true it would be sad if it wasn't just so damn funny
  
  Usually it's the other way around, but with him? Yeah.
- im waiting for the white supremacists to cope with defeat by inventing a new conspiracy theory about indian women ruling the US
It doesnt matter. Every Trumpet in my office is eating this up. I pulled up a picture of her Jamaican dad. Their answer was "Jamaicans aren't black." I really dont know how to respond to that.
- Some other notable Jamaicans: Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, Grace Jones. I suppose your coworkers would say they're not black either?
  
  The sky is yellow if it upsets a lib
  
  They won’t be black until they try to enter the US. At which point they’ll be angry violent blacks coming for American jobs, even if they’re only on vacation.
  
  Bob Marley is a bad example because his dad was white, so he must white as well /s
- Go to google maps, get them to select a random street view in Jamaica. Ask them to describe the people they’re seeing.
- ...........dafuq??
- There are cultural differences between Afro-Caribbean people and "black" (ADOS) Americans. The trump fans might be trying to use that to drive a wedge in the Democratic Party.
  But that's like the difference between Scottish and Irish people. They are basically the same in English history, lesser people to be conquered. Meaningless when it comes to racism.
  
  I don't know that many MAGA folks with that nuanced a view of race.
  
  Yeah I was worried I'd sound insensitive by posting that. But honestly, to this specific group, I want to just say O now skin color doesn't matter.
- The die-hard Trumpets are a lost cause. But stuff like this should hopefully start to peel away the other people that he actually needs in order to win.
  
  Yeah, I don't really see it helping, the people who belive him aren't less likely to vote for someone that isn't black. There's no trumpers saying 'oh I really.wanted a black woman as president, guess I'll have to vote the racist guy instead'
- Which is a complete waste of time on Trump's part. She's visibly not white AND a woman, so them not voting for her is built-in. It only has the potential to lose him some edge case voters, not gain any.
If being half Black means you cannot be Black, then Obama was a White man.
- The racists are trying to appeal to both black and white voters here. They used to say that things like:
  "What do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water?"
  "Dirty water"
  Now they're saying that people of mixed heritage aren't anything. That they're the Other.
  Harris grew up in Oakland in a Black neighborhood. As usual the racists are cruel but here they're spreading an obvious lie designed to erode her standing among black voters
  
  I hope she gets one of those "black jobs"...like President.
  
  Can’t have mixed people, they might break the whole divide and conquer thing that they’ve perfected in the last little while.
- Don't beat them with their own arguments! It just confuses them...
These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
Oh, so Trump is accusing her of what he is guilty of. He would change his ethnicity from Swedish to Irish to German depending on who was around.
- omarosa
  Oh another piece of shit who used Trump to climb the right wing ladder to make money than hopped off to make money talking to his detractors. Cool cool cool.
Okay I'm starting to really believe that trump was a puppet carefully managed since the 2016 election that slowly fell apart as he actually got power and became president and fired literally everyone who didn't lick his boots. Seriously almost forgot how almost all of the news for like a year was like, some tweets and trump fires someone or attacks them (the latter never stops) I digress
He is so clearly floundering for the first time. This fucker has never had bad press until now. He isn't different or anything, just suddenly some people are realizing and agree the emperor isn't wearing clothes. That cost him so much powerful support. I speculate the evangical Republicans, who are still a major contribution to conservative politics today, are withdrawing their resources and efforts this election cycle to regroup and plan how to handle the next 2 years to the best of their advantage.
- Well, no. He's been floundering since he fucked up COVID. That was something he could bluster his way through. Republicans could see their friends and family dying.
  That's why he lost. He's bad at being president. Plus old and weird.
  
  How many conservatives do you know that admit the severity of covid after the fact, even after losing loved ones?
  Their heads are firmly buried in the sand. It's a non-factor of that voting demographic.
  
  A better way to put it is that he's stuck on defense for the first time. His usual tactic is to lash out at anyone that attacks him to force them on defense. Swapping candidates put him completely off balance. His attacks aren't landing and only make his position worse.
  
  I disagree strongly. He lost a lot of support but he did not lose support on this level, with this tone. It's like the ones who were scared to say a single critical word are now scared to say a single supportive word. He is a political leper
  When he lost 2020 and fucked up his image beyond repair. The insurrection and being twice impeached and losing court case after court case both with the election fruad, stormy daniels, and all other smaller charges that I may not know or recall. He is losing face and he was abandoned by the family. I truly believe he lost the support of religious/evangical leaders and that's the big reason attitudes are changing.
  Of course this is all opinion and based on my experiences and how I perceive them. I wonder though if anyone else has had ties to people who consumed like... Christian media and what sort of changes they have seen in attitudes toward trump this year vs last year.
- More "Haphazardly guided by fox news" but yeah.
- The Sarah Palin gambit blew up in their face again.
I guess he’s free to say whatever the fuck he wants if his party think they’ve got the electoral votes rigged in their favor? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/
This is why he keeps saying “we don’t need the votes” at almost every rally
- Well if it's rigged in his favor, well then gee golly, I don't have to go into town on election day and vote for him!
  
  I was going to vote for Trump, but now that I know he's going to win no matter what I'll just stay home!
- He was begging Christians for votes recently.
"we're hoping he doesn't act like a crazy racist and sexist person, we can't control him"
says person working for uncontrollable crazy racist and sexist person.
Let me guess, the black genes are only 3/5 as powerful as her Indian genes?
- Combined together they form - The Kamalatron!
“As you can see, my opponent is a total fraud.
She even changed her name from Nikki to Kamala”
My guess is that his evangelical supporters see JD Vance as a betrayal creating a rift in the party between god bros and corporate/tech bros. He was depending on hatred of Biden to keep his groups aligned.
That and the dominion lawsuit tempered fox news so they can't parrot his most sensational claims.
I think he desperately doesn't want her to get the black vote, so he's trying to tell everyone that she's not black. It's not going to work and it just makes him look like an idiot and bigot. And this is his best and most polite, practiced attempt. *Also half black Obama was black enough for him [pops popcorn].
- Let’s say for a second hypothetically that Kamala is just Indian but still calls herself black. Do we all for a second think that the black community would just be fine with some old rich white dude policing their identity anyways?
  
  Well, if we are playing this straight, he didnt even answer the question he was given. They were asking him about why black people should vote for him, and he responds that Kamala is actually Indian.
  I know he normally talks like this, but come on thats absurd right?
- so he's trying to say to everyone that she's not black.
  God damn it, what weird timeline this is.
Here's what I don't get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
Edit: Assumptions got challenged, read replies.
So even if he was right (he's not, he's what physicists would call "not even wrong"), so what? Are racists any less racist to indians than african americans?
I don't get the playbook here, non-racists would just be confused and racists would still be racists.
- Here’s what I don’t get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
  No, that's very much not true, except maybe on a very superficial "some bigot called me a slur" kind of level. Indian-Americans are disproportionately wealthy and highly-educated; African-Americans are disproportionately the opposite. African-Americans have been subjected to institutional racism for centuries that is still ongoing because of the extreme wealth disparities it created (e.g. even after theoretically abolishing redlining decades ago, houses in black neighborhoods still don't appreciate in value at the same rate ones in white neighborhoods do... except when the neighborhood gentrifies and forces the black people out). Meanwhile, the bulk of Indian-Americans arrived after the Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, etc. and had the means and opportunity to move straight into middle-class white neighborhoods and assimilate.
  That's not to say that Indian-Americans don't face "struggles:" discrimination against Indian-American tech workers in particular is definitely a thing, especially motivated by a "the H1-Bs turk err jerbs" sentiment. (Meanwhile, Black engineers are treated either normally or at worst, as a curiosity, because there are so few of them to begin with. Pop quiz: why are there so few of them to begin with...?)
  So, no: while it's true that all minorities are subject to discrimination, the type and extent of that discrimination varies greatly between different minority groups. The struggles are not the same.
  Getting back to the real question you asked: the reason Trump wants to treat Harris as Indian, not Black, is to try to delegitimatize her in the eyes of Black voters as being some kind of elite that doesn't actually understand their struggle.
  
  Huh, very valid points. I guess I was assuming casual racism that would come from only appearances and assumptions. But you are right that economic class heavily impacts the discrimination a person faces and that's specifically where african americans have been hit the hardest historically.
  Thanks for providing more context.
  
  Valid points indeed, but I think this strategy might not work in his favor, because anyone who had to endure any kind of racial discrimination based on something like skin color will be offended by these attacks. The old white man simply doesn't have any legitimacy to comment on someone being too black or not black enough. It's disgusting and weird.
- I think he's thinking it'll go something like:
  Potential black voters in swing states: "Kamala is half Indian?? Hell no, I'm not voting for her! As everyone knows, all people are racist pieces of shit towards anyone who doesn't align exactly with the ethnicity they are, so I'm staying home!"
He's weird.
Is Kamala isn't black, why does trump hate her so hard?
- Woman.
- Because Donald is a bastard man
many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender […] would pose a serious liability for the campaign
Do they seriously understand their base that badly, or is this just optics? "I hope his completely unexpected racism doesn't alienate our voters who are totally not racist we swear this is so bad we're so worried oh no"
- The base isn't going to be put off by it, but that's not who they're worried about. Every election is divided by independent swing voters and yes, some of them do care.
  The 33% that constitutes Trump's base probably likes him more after every racist outburst, but they alone don't win national elections.
  
  I've seen a lot of people raise doubts about whether there really are significant amounts of swing voters this time 'round, and I'd sort of tend to agree – if not for any other reason than it seems bizarre that somebody could be vacillating between Trump and Harris
- The more of a pig he is, the closer to the election, the more likely it is to turn out the vote against him. Conservatives vote no matter what typically. Enthusiasm on the left decides the election
Recently, a major topic of discussion has been how fast the Democratic campaign went from weak to enthusiastic.
Stories like this one remind me how fast the Trump campaign went from scary to amusingly pathetic.
- Raccoons are much smaller than me. But I would be hesitant to corner one. Never underestimate the destructive capabilities of someone with poor priorities.
  
  Good point. I know better than to let my guard down completely, but I’m less concerned about him than I used to be. It feels good.
- Fascism exemplifies being both scary and pathetic.
Could someone please return Trump's big balloon? It's about that big. Refer to the picture, about that size. Maybe a little smaller, maybe a little bigger. It could have been a beach balloon or ball.
- Someone needs to 'shop a concertina into his hands when he's spewing his typical oral diarrhea.
  
  that one's a classic.
- I'll never unsee this now lmao; thanks for the laugh (and future laughs, for every time he uses that same mannerism)
- omfg, that is gold.
those in his party who consider racism a losing electoral strategy
I thought weaponized racism was literally a requirement for their party
- Both parties. There's nothing the dems love more than proxies for racism.
  Kamala pledging to pass Biden's border bill that closes the southern border and increases ICE detention capacity is a slightly more respectable way of expressing what Trump expresses about immigrants, while promoting almost the exact same racist policies.
  You can go back through Obama doing the same thing talking about black fatherhood as if it was the result of blackness instead of the economic results of racist policies and both-sidesing police violence, in the 90s, you had "crack babies predisposed to crime".
  Republicans do overt racism, and dems know that overt racism doesn't play well with their base, so they obfuscate it to chase "moderate republicans".
  
  Muh both sidez
I was hoping for a throwback to “Obama isn’t black” where the image took a colourpicker to say Trump’s darker
- I was thinking Obama should start saying that he is white. This will really ruffle their feathers.
What if ... maybe he got Harris mixed up with Nikki Haley? He got Haley and Pelosi mixed up before, and Haley was his most recent opponent, in the primaries. So it wouldn't be surprising he would say, "But she was always Indian before" if he was confused by the interviewers referring to Harris as Black while he was thinking of Haley. But he can't admit that so he has to double down.
That thought just now popped into my mind.
creepy weirdos
I suspect Trump is not really orange. I think he is white and he paints himself orange. I don't know why he'd do that, but it is very, very weird.
- Orangeface should really be something of the past.
"Black man, white woman, black baby, white man, black woman, black baby"
Public Enemy
- What is this? A shopping list?
  
  No, it's a reference to the lyrics from a Public Enemy song on their 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The song addresses themes of racial inequality and systemic injustice. It's simply referencing the notion that if a person is born half Black from one parent, the child will be deemed Black henceforth.
  
  Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.
This is not a winning platform. Keep it up, please.
Worse? There are actually lots of Africans in India and they've been there for thousands of years. Some big migration once upon a time and you have communities of blacks now.
- Not to mention alot of Indians in Africa, at least in Kenya. There's plenty of Indian-Africans and probably plenty of African-Indians.
  
  Shockingly, the world is a diverse place and people intermingle. Hmm.
- Also the first humans out of Africa settled there. They have groups on the coast which have genetics extremely similar to humans that lived in Africa and that time period.
This is the dumbest shit. Like, I have pictures of me with my Italian family, eating big pasta meals together and I have pictures with my Scottish family in the family tartan. Is this kind of thing so hard to understand?
The braindead part is that it shows how much something most don't care about... Is so important to trump and the Republicans
I don't even begin to understand the angle of attack here, let alone getting into the weeds of how he thinks it will help him. I guess in his mind the birther fiasco with Obama was a huge success that led to a massive downturn in popularity and eventually a lost election? You know, the opposite of actual reality?
- He's like a 100 years old so he probably still has the view that race mixing is an even greater sin than being black.
  Oh and also, a common line of attack from conservatives in Australia is to make out that white people are claiming to be black to get benefits (affirmative action, welfare, etc). Maybe Trump is trying (and failing) to create a similar link between that and the whole DEI hire thing.
  
  It worked so well for him against Elizabeth Warren that I think he assumes the same will work here, even though the situations are totally different. Hell, he might think they're both the same type of "Indian"
So, I think some people make skin color such an issue because it’s important to them. People don’t like Harris just because she’s black. Harris is a competent, smart and reasonable politician, that’s why people like her.
I think subconsciously Trump is just picking up on the fact that if he wasn’t white, he wouldn’t be a leader of the white supremacist type movement. Harris has mass appeal, she’s not just popular with a single type of person, and not just because she’s black or Indian. What a non-issue and a distraction
Trump is fucking weird. Dude doesn't even understand what it's like to have different traditions on your father and mother's side of the fence.
can we please stop upvoting these ridiculous trump headlines. ignore the motherfucker.
- Normally I'd agree with you that reporting every dumb racist thought that disgorges out his face is annoying and counter-productive. But continuing this particularly inneffective tactic is good news and I'm glad to hear it.
- The world would be a very different place today if fewer people ignored him in 2016.
- No, the trolls in the back of the room need to see all this.
I honestly think he can't grasp the idea of a person being biracial and proud of both sides of their heritage.
Well in the same breath, Trump is trying really hard not to be white, soooo...
One of the Trump people I know said Kamala Harris changed ethnicities depending on what audience she is in front of.
- I would push back on that next time you hear it with... well of course you would. If you have something in common with someone their interested in then why wouldn't you talk about that aspect about yourself? It's just sharing a common ground, if an Indian host pointed out her Indian heritage then blurting out I'm half black is just...weird.
  A good example for them: if you're a NASCAR driver and you're being interviewed on the track, you don't start talking about your truck.
  
  Yeah I don't think it's that big a deal. Especially if people already know she's half Indian and half black. I wasn't gonna push my political opinions because I don't want this person to think of me any different and not a dirty little commie liberal.
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha

176 comments