“AP Headlines Called Harris Indian American in 2016 [but] Black in 2020? [snip] Verdict: True”

-- Snopes Fact Check, July 26, 2024

“President Trump on Thursday signed a bipartisan bill that will permanently provide more than $250 million a year to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities [and] other institutions that serve … minority students.  Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, thanked Trump ….”

-- Associated Press, Dec. 19, 2019

“I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population … including employment, including opportunity zones with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, … Historically Black colleges and universities were out of money … I saved them.”

-- Donald Trump's response to Rachel Scott after she made false or misleading attacks on him at the Association of Black Journalists, July 31, 2024

One of the favorite storylines the Democrat “News”-media Colluders (hereafter the DNC) have recently concocted to divide the country further, thereby enabling them to claim that Trump is dividing the country, is that at the gathering of “black journalists,” Trump made a racist attack on Kamala Harris.  

He did no such thing, but one must have a certain basic competence in the English language and some minimal reasoning skills, perhaps at the advanced high school or community college level, to see this.

White House Press Secretary Karrine Jean-Pierre, referring to Trump’s remark, stated that what Trump said is “repulsive” because no one "has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no one's right." 

The New York Times, always eager to deploy sophistries to divide the country, claims Trump “questioned” Harris’ race and made a “racial attack” on her.  Elsewhere it adds that Trump “attacked her racial identity.”

The Associated Press says Trump’s remarks are a “criticism of Harris’ race.”  What’s left of the Washington Post states that Trump “attacked Harris’ racial identity.”

Forbes magazine, which appears to want a lot more illegal workers in the country than Trump wants, states that Trump “falsely questioned” Harris’ race. 

NBC states that Trump “questioned Harris’ racial identity.” 

The remnants of the BBC across the pond claim that Trump “questioned” Harris’ race. 

In fact, Trump did not “repulsively” try to tell Harris who she is or how she identifies (KJP).  He did not make a “racial attack” on Harris or “question her racial identity” (NYT).  He did not “criticize Harris’ race” (AP).  He did not “attack Harris’ racial identity” (WaPo).  He did not “falsely question” Harris’ race (Forbes and NBC).  To see the truth, should this still be of any interest to anyone, one must examine Trump’s precise words at the debate:

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 … is she Indian or is she Black? All I can say is, I read where she was not Black and then I read that she was Black, and that’s O.K.  That’s up to her.

Trump does not, in this remark, “repulsively” tell Harris what her racial identity is.  That is what Joe Biden explicitly did when he told the black broadcaster known as Charlamagne tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” 

Nor did Trump “question” Harris’s race or “racial identity.”  If one is capable of reading what Trump said at the ninth-grade level, one can easily verify that he explicitly said, “Either one [black or Indian] was O.K. with me.  That’s up to her.”  Trump was not questioning or attacking her race at all. He was questioning something very different.

NBC comes a bit closer to the truth, although in a typically sloppy formulation when they claim Trump accused Harris of “deciding to become black” (Trump did not say “decide.”) 

What Trump actually did was suggest that Harris changed her public presentation about her race for political expediency.  That is not questioning or attacking her race or racial identity.  It is a criticism of Harris’ political dishonesty.  And, for reasons too obvious to mention (e.g., her concealing Joe Biden’s mental competency for years while that was in her political interest), the DNC must go all out to prevent a discussion of Harris’ dishonesty. 

And, as Snopes, not exactly a bunch of right-wing wackos, verifies, AP headlines identified Harris as Indian-American in 2016 but as Black in 2020.  Is Trump not permitted to notice such changes and ask about them (which is precisely what he did in the interview with Rachel Scott).  Please inform us peasants of the new rules about what one is permitted to notice in the “news” and what one is not permitted to notice!

Since the DNC manifestly cannot allow a discussion of Harris’s obvious willingness to play fast and loose with the truth, they had, in the standard play, to construct a fake racism charge against Trump to provide a smokescreen to cover her dishonesty. 

Of course, what remains of our “news” media were quick to jump on Harris’ side in the dispute when they ordained that “Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race” and provided several comical sophistries that Harris always identified as “black,” namely, that she “attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities.” 

Unfortunately, attending Howard University does not make one “black” (or “African American”).  Howard’s recent racial breakdown included “3.44% Asian, 1.09% White, 0.908% American Indian or Alaska Native” students.  Please explain to us, O great ones at AP, how attending Howard University makes these Asians, Whites, American Indians, and Alaskan natives “black” or African American!  It looks like AP is going to need a new chapter in our biology texts. 

It would be nice if what’s left of our Democrat party and their stenographers in what remains of our “news” media possessed the basic reading and reasoning skills required of a community college critical reasoning course, but let’s not start expecting miracles. 

It is illuminating that, in the aftermath of this sorry manufactured scandal, CBS Austin reports that Harris, when asked about her race, “dodges question on her racial identity” and recites the platitude, which had not been requested, that we have “More in common than what separates us.”  The reason Harris dodges this question is because, as Snopes clarifies, there are genuine questions about how she portrayed her racial identity over the years.  Trump stated explicitly that he doesn’t care what race she identifies as. That was not the point. He was only asking about why this appears to have changed over the years.

It is true that Trump’s formulations are often inartful.  Yes, he is not a professor of English Literature at Princeton.  He is a tough, bare-knuckle businessman in the harsh New York construction industry.  His question about Harris’s prima facie changing racial identity was fair enough. 

What is genuinely “repulsive” is the way the DNC consistently twists Trump’s words in order to turn nothing, or very little, into a fake hyperventilating racial scandal.  That, not Trump’s clumsy words, is what is actually divisive. 

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