Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he was appealing to black voters because of his felony conviction, calling the Republican candidate’s racist efforts to reach out to black Americans “insulting.”
Harris, the first Black American, South Asian American and woman to become vice president, made the remarks during an interview with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski that aired Monday. In her interview, Brzezinski asked Democrats for her thoughts on the indicted former president’s attempts to connect with black voters through legal battles and his oft-repeated claim that he can’t be a racist because he has black friends .
“Well, the first point is insulting because it connects to the second point.” Harris answered. “It’s insulting for a number of reasons, including that he’s reduced an entire population to a total of what he thinks it is. And he was wrong, he was wrong.”
Trump was found guilty last month on 34 felony charges related to the hush-money trial, one of many cases in which the former president has been indicted, including charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost.
“I was accused of nothing. … I was charged a second, third and fourth time.” Trump said this at the Black Conservative Alliance gala in South Carolina in February.
“And a lot of people said they liked me because black people were so hurt and discriminated against. And they actually saw me as being discriminated against,” he said. “It was really amazing. Maybe – maybe there’s something there.”
The Republican candidate repeated this claim in an interview with Semafor published earlier this month, claiming that black voters have told him “very loud and clear” that they “feel something similar has happened.”
At the time of Trump’s February remarks, the Biden campaign said Republicans had “spread racist tropes” mocking black voters.
“This may come as news to Trump, but pushing tired tropes, Jordan wannabes and mug shot T-shirts won’t win over black voters who have suffered record-high unemployment and soaring uninsured rates under his leadership,” Biden spokeswoman Sarafina Chitica said. “He said. said in a statement. “Trump is showing black voters exactly what he thinks. And his idea of trying to convince them is just as banal and racist.”
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Trump has a long history of racism, famously sentencing the Exonerated Five, black and brown teenage boys falsely accused of rape in New York in the 1980s, to death. He also led a right-wing conspiracy that falsely accused former President Barack Obama of being born in Kenya, not the United States, and called white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, “very fine people.” Just last month, a producer of Trump’s former reality TV show “The Apprentice” claimed there was a recording of the then-businessman using the N-word toward a black contestant.
“I have so many black friends that if I had been racist they wouldn’t have been friends and I would have known better and found out sooner than anyone else. If they thought I was a racist they wouldn’t spend even two minutes with me. And I’m not a racist!” In an interview with Semafor this month, Trump said that despite the reality that having a black friend does not undo racist acts, a claim he has often repeated.
Despite repeatedly denouncing the hush-money trial that made him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony, Trump has now proudly been convicted of receiving massive donations to his 2024 presidential campaign.
“Every time a radical left Democrat, a Marxist, a communist, a fascist indicts me, I consider it a great badge of honor,” Trump told a South Carolina audience in February. “Because I am being prosecuted for you, the American people. I am charged for you, the black population. I am being accused by various groups of sick people.”
In a Pew Research Center poll released last month, 18% of black respondents said they would vote for Trump. This figure is twice as high as the 2020 election. About 77% said they would vote for Biden, and 65% said they believed Trump broke the law in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Days before the first presidential debate of the 2024 election, Trump announced that he had chosen his vice presidential candidate, but did not specify who it would be. The list of potential contenders includes two black Republicans, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Rep. Byron Donald (Fla.), the latter of whom recently argued that blacks fared better during America’s racist Jim Crow era. .
“I don’t know who he will choose. I try not to spend too much time thinking about what he thinks,” Harris said Monday. “But listen. I think it’s clear that there is a litmus test. And he will choose someone who will be more loyal to him than to his country… and he is more likely to bring in someone who will be a rubber stamp.”
