If Donald Trump wants to lose the "weird" label, he needs to stop being.......not so much weird in this clip as just plain creepy:
"She was always of Indian heritage ... until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black." What kind of person talks like this? A five-year-old knows better.
Kamala Harris went to Howard University. In the '90s she was famously the girlfriend of California Speaker Willie Brown. Here's the lead from a San Francisco Chronicle article in 2004 about her first political victory:
Kamala Harris was sworn in Thursday as the first black woman in California history to serve as a district attorney, pledging to be "smart on crime" as she assumes the role of San Francisco's top prosecutor.
Harris's ancestry, as everyone knows, is Black on her father's side and Indian on her mother's side. This isn't hard. But Trump blundered ahead obliviously, suggesting that she only recently adopted a fake Black identity for political advantage. And even more incredibly, he seemed to think this might be a great ploy in front of a Black audience. Was he expecting them to nod appreciatively and murmur, "Hell yeah, man's got a point"?
Whatever else you can say, Trump sure as hell didn't win any Asian or Black votes today. Why did he agree to an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in the first place if he planned to be hostile and condescending the whole time?
Trump doesn't do strategy; he does empirical tactics. What are empirical tactics? Throw a whole bunch of shit at the wall and if anything sticks then double or triple down on it again and again. The good news is he is still in the shit throwing stage, nothing he has thrown shows any sign of sticking so far.
It’s easy to understand why someone growing up in California identifying as black might want to attend a traditionally black college. Not impossible, but a whole lot less likely someone identifying as south Asian but not black (per Trump’s description) would want to attend a HBC.
There is nothing mysterious here. White nationalism is the core (and only) principle of the MAGA base. This has always been the only principle that Trump and his devoted followers have ever cared about. Complaining about brown people is the only reason that this group and political movement have come together. Complaining about brown people is also deeply important to Trump.
If you dont know people like this, it is probably hard to understand how important this is in their worldview.
You are 100% correct and flipping through social media last night you would have thought trump cured cancer. His base LOVED it! A lot of Hell Yeahs and fist pumping from the MAGA morons
I loved Roy Wood Jr’s tweet asking people to tell their stories about when they became black. The responses are hilarious. I just want someone like RuPaul to reply he became black right after he had decided to be gay.
As someone who's been casually following Kamala Harris's career since she was San Francisco DA, I knew she was Black before I knew she was also Indian. (If I'd otherwise known the name 'Kamala' I might have guessed, but I didn't.)
The most interesting thing about trump comments about Harris' "blackness" is how they overshadowed much worse things that he said in the same interview. For example he defended police officers that shot unarmed woman, while also saying he will pardon people that assualted police officers in Jan 6.
Yes. The whole thing is worth seeing, and I otherwise never feel the need to listen to more than a sound bite of his awfulness.
Then Harris Faulkner (did the Trump campaign get to pick one black interviewer?) went on Fox and claimed that being in the room she could tell that those smart enough to get his hilarious jokes were laughing with him, not at him.
What Donald was saying is that Harris was passing when it was helpful and convenient for her, then claimed her black heritage when that was more useful.
Trump is at least a sociopath and probably a psychopath (google it if you doubt me). In his mind he can do no wrong and is a master of the universe. He wasn’t kidding when he posited that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it. He’s done the equivalent numerous time and it never sticks. Reagan was the teflon man, but Trump humbles him in that attribute.
Meooooow. The convicted whore monger is SCARED OF ANYONE THAT IS NOT RICH & WHITE! HE (?) better be very afraid.. Kitties know.
Why? Because Trump operates on pure id. He has no impulse control at all.
I think Kamala Harris could use this moment to connect with white male voters (which I am -- but she's getting my vote regardless of anything she does). It's a very American thing to "be" lots of different things, and embrace them all. On St. Patrick's day, I'm Irish American. On Easter, when I went to Grandpa's house, I was Polish American. When I went and visited Grandma, I was Ukrainian American. Most of my siblings spouses are Italian American. Here in America we'll steal and borrow from anybody, especially when it comes to food, culture, art, and we're proud to do it. At our best, we embrace all those different influences, and I think that's something working class white guys understand. Trump's rant would be like saying I couldn't be proud of both my Polish Grandpa and my Irish Grandpa -- them there's fightin' words.
Trump wants everybody to be only one thing -- a worshiper of him. That anyone can have multiple identities outside of their worship of him is inconceivable. Harris should lean into it, and say yeah, we're all a bunch of different parts, and we're OK with that and see it as a source of strength. Trump isn't, and wants everybody to be at each others throats over it.
I guess Trump thinks he's 100 percent German - Sieg Heil!
Fred Trump was German -- second generation, but German -- and his mother, as we know, was Scottish/British. For a time, the Fred Trump (and then Donald) claimed to be Swedish so as to downplay their German heritage in the wake of WWI and II.
"It used to be Trømp, but they changed it on Ellis Island..."
BTW, no one's name was changed at Ellis Island. Their names were what was on the ship register from Bremen or wherever. It was always just a story to satisfy the relatives back in the home country.
Au contraire, Kevin. If you had asked me, before Trump made this particular insult, whether he was going to make it, I would have said "the odds are 100%, there is zero percentage chance that he won't."
I think there is a 60% chance that if Buttigieg is the VP Trump would accuse him of "turning gay" for the "woke vote."
It would be like the Seinfeld "it doesn't upset me as a Jew, it upsets me as a comedian" episode if it weren't so obvious an illustration of what his base, and in this case, a large portion of his base, believes.
Not only are they not in favor of any type of DEI or affirmative action remedy, period, they firmly, not slightly, believe that tons of brown people play the system, including mixed race people becoming "black" -- not for the jokes, but for their jobs.
I know Kevin's "can you believe it" posts by now, but surely by now everybody knows how many millions wish they could have said the exact same thing.
Been saying for going on 10 years now that every time ANY Democrat talks about the Supreme Court, they should be referring to the "CREEPY WEIRDOS deciding how the rest of us are supposed to live our lives..."
And now the "creepy weirdos" have gone beyond just the world of legal fiction, er, SCOTUS decisions... Now it's the whole damn party..
Creepy weirdos... Every damn last one of them...
No thank you, creepy weirdos. Keep your hands and whacko opinions to yourselves.
"Whatever else you can say, Trump sure as hell didn't win any Asian or Black votes today. Why did he agree to an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in the first place if he planned to be hostile and condescending the whole time?"
Because Trump and the GOP's entire political ideology is now wrapped up almostly solely around public displays of dominance, Trump thought he was going to push around a few of the ni... excuse me... Black ladies on stage.. and that it would win points with the Incel Bros who make up the majority of the GQP.
I'm sure what Trump thought he would do is use the stage to suggest to his Black audience that Harris was not really "one of them" and drive a wedge between Harris and her base. Because he's incredibly stupid and racist, that's how he views identity politics, particularly among minorities. (See too his attempt to spin his felony convictions and stupid sneaker line as some kind of ghetto street cred -- same play).
So instead of making a case that he really can do something for African Americans, he spent a half hour punching himself in the dick in front of an audience of people with the unique ability to report on it immediately.
????