Harris faces a pivotal moment as Trump questions her identity

For Vice President Harris’s supporters, Donald Trump’s lashing criticisms of her racial identity on Wednesday came with blinding speed but little surprise: A week after entering the race, the first Black and Indian American woman to top a party’s presidential ticket is contending with Trump’s assertion that she leaned into being Black for political expediency.

“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 at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists. He added later that Harris “was Indian all the way” but then “became a Black person.”

On Wednesday night, Harris addressed Trump’s statements during remarks at the annual gathering of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, calling Trump’s words “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,” she said. “A leader who doesn’t respond with hostility and anger when presented 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 vice president’s aides and supporters, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy during a delicate moment, stressed that her response — both on Wednesday and in coming days — does not have to be dramatic and forceful to be effective.

Trump’s own language could alienate him from moderate voters wary that a second Trump term would be riddled with chaos and animus, they said, and Trump’s words attacking Harris and the Black journalists who were interviewing him could further motivate Democratic voters who see Harris’s sudden entry into the race as a moment of historic racial progress.

“I don’t think she has to say anything, to be honest,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative and a Harris confidant. “Sometimes you don’t have to. What’s the saying — you never fight with a pig, because you both get muddy and the pig likes it. So there’s really no need for her to respond to it. We can see the history of her candidacy. She needs to continue to tell Americans what she can do for them. Let him unravel.”

The episode is a reminder, if any was needed, of the extraordinary nature of the current moment, when the first woman of color is running for president on a major-party ticket in a country whose history includes no women and one person of color serving as president.

Trump’s comments came during a stretch when Harris was attending several events likely to resonate with Black women, including her comments Wednesday night. Harris’ appearance at the Sigma Gamma Rho gathering was the latest effort in her extensive outreach to members of historically Black sororities and fraternities.

Harris spoke to her own sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, in July and addressed another group, Zeta Phi Beta, last week. A day earlier, she spoke to a raucous crowd of 10,000 people in Atlanta, many of them Black women enthused by her entry into the race.

On Thursday, Harris is scheduled to speak at the funeral of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), who was seen by her admirers as a forceful voice for Black Americans and women of color.

Trump’s comments Wednesday did not come in a vacuum; he has been stepping up his attacks on Harris’s identity. On Tuesday, he suggested that Harris would be unable to stand up to foreign leaders because of her appearance, though he pointedly declined to elaborate.

“She’ll be like a play toy,” Trump told Fox News. “They look at her and they say, ‘We can’t believe we got so lucky.’ They’re going to walk all over her.” He added, “And I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.”

Some voters may expect Harris to respond with a full-throated response to Trump’s attacks, as then-candidate John F. Kennedy did in 1960 when political adversaries raised questions about his Catholic faith.

In her first bid for the presidency, Harris assailed Joe Biden, then one of her primary rivals, during a presidential debate, saying his efforts to find common ground with segregationist senators and opposition to busing students in the 1970s was hurtful to her and people like her.

Many of her supporters cheered the comments. But some critics, including many Black voters in the Democratic primary, saw the move as overly calculated, complete with ready-made T-shirts meant to capitalize on the moment within hours of the debate. Biden ultimately won the Democratic primary with massive support from Black voters, while Harris was out of the race before a single ballot was cast.

Now, some of Harris’s associates and allies say engaging with Trump’s comments at length would risk turning the contest into a debate on race and sending each side’s backers to their respective corners. Letting Trump’s remarks stand on their own, in contrast, could prompt many voters to recoil, they said, while Harris can focus on issues voters care about, such as the economy and abortion rights.

Harris’s mother is from India, and her father was born in Jamaica. Harris has embraced both identities for decades. She attended historically Black Howard University and has been a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha since the mid-1980s. She has routinely talked about being a barrier-breaking first in many of the jobs she has held.

Harris became the Democrats’ likely nominee after President Biden on July 21 bowed to pressure to step aside following a rocky performance in a presidential debate against Trump. Democrats hoped Harris’s entry into the race would galvanize minority and younger voters not enthused about the oldest president in history seeking a second term. Biden is 81 years old, and Harris is 59.

In the reshaped race, both Harris and Trump have tried garner support from Black voters. Harris has spoken to Black sororities and held rallies in cities with large Black populations; Trump took questions from Black journalists and told the NABJ audience he was “the best president for the Black population” since Abraham Lincoln. He later accused the three Black female journalists serving as moderators of being unprofessional and biased against him.

Trump’s campaign responded to the episode with a statement that did not directly address his comments.

“President Trump remains defiant in the face of media bias and will continue working to make life better for all Americans regardless of how poorly he’s treated by supporters of Kamala Harris, and in fact President Trump hopes to win them over in the future with his vision of returning success to our Country,” the statement said.

In its own statement after Trump’s remarks, a Harris campaign spokesperson also did not directly address Trump’s attack against her, instead saying Trump had showcased “the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president.”

“Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency — while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in,” the statement from campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said. “Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.”

The campaign also said Trump’s comments were “a taste of the chaos and division” that would mark a second Trump term.

Trump’s political ascent has been steeped in grievance, and Harris supporters have long thought he would seek to make identity a central part of a race between him and Harris.

Trump’s entry into presidential politics came after he falsely asserted that former president Barack Obama had not been born in the United States. He dismissed his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton as “unhinged” and “unbalanced.” And he has been mispronouncing Harris’s first name for years.

Donna Brazile, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and Vice President Al Gore’s campaign manager when he ran for president, said Trump has shown himself to be a master at leaning into race and gender tropes to assail women and minority candidates.

“One way to try to weaken them or to try to marginalize them is to question their own identity or question their own background or their qualifications,” Brazile said. “What Trump did today was take a page from the same playbook where he has been one of the primary authors in the last couple of years.

“I would hope that all the leaders in society and in other communities would speak up and not put all of this burden of race and gender on the shoulders of a presidential candidate,” she added.