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?
it's just a "look at me, aren't i important?" bid for attention since he hates the media's focus on harris the last couple weeks
campaign by tantrum, and there he is at the top of the compliant media sites; mission accomplished
i like the white house response, calling him "repulsive"
that is an infinitely more effective frame than 'dangerous', which makes him sound powerful and bad-ass
creepy and repulsive can't be spun into good traits
The purpose of this is to "trigger the libs" into responding with fiery outrage. Then he just plays it off like, "Well, I was just telling it like it is."
Better than shouting "Outrage! Dangerous! Racist!" would be just a simple "What? What the hell is he talking about? The man is living in a fantasy world. Weird."
Bingo. Exactly. He's losing ground, big time, so he goes into the belly of the liberal beast and trolls the libs in spectacular fashion. GOTV, MAGA style, at its finest. The worst response to him, as you note, and the one way too many liberals can't seem to crawl out from under, is the "How dare you? Outrageous! Shame on you,sir!" response. Yours is perfect - the "weird" accusation seems to be a "can not compute" moment for the reactionaries. Weak, weird, pathetic, sad, creepy, repulsive, and if it were still allowed, retarded. You want to cut Trump off at the knees? Dismiss him, like he doesn't matter. Because he doesn't.
The purpose of this is to "trigger the libs" into responding with fiery outrage. Then he just plays it off like, "Well, I was just telling it like it is."
Maybe. I just think people need to accept the fact that he's not a very smart or effective politician. He had one major success—2016—but even then he was pretty lucky (sometimes being a very skilled white working class whisperer—which he undeniably is—is sufficient, if conditions are cooperative).
He may have believed the hype about how he was making inroads with people of color, and thought it would be a rousing success. Or his decision to be interviewed at that forum may be a sign he's rattled. Or, sure, he may have thought it was a good opportunity to double down on his white ethno-nationalist base. But again, none of these are the decisions of a savvy politician (he needs to expand his appeal if he is to win).
He's. Just. Not. That. Good.
Not so good at electoral politics, yes. What he *has* been very good at is driving in wedges that separate the populace and amping up emotional stakes.
This is the correct take. He knows how to play the media, but he needs to be in charge of the news cycle to do it. He's used to being the center of the frame, sucking all the oxygen toward him.
Due to both his infantile personality and his political mode of operation - earned media and blasting his opponents off the screen by being too outrageous to ignore - he has to get the cameras back on him.
These are all attempts to regain control of the news cycle by any means necessary:
- "You won't need to vote next time"
- "Bad Jews"
- "Kamala Harris only identifies as Black"
It will continue until Harris is kicked to the periphery of public attention. Of course, it will cost him the election.
Signs of desperation? Remember he wasn't above inciting an insurrection last time he held a losing hand.
Because it makes his acolytes swell up with nationalistic pride?
This reminded me of Texan Love Song, a satiric Elton John song from 1972. The chorus:
So it's ki yi yippie yi yi
You long hairs are sure gonna die
Our American home was clean till you came
And kids still respected the president's name
And the eagle still flew in the sky
Hearts filled with national pride
Then you came along with your drug-crazy songs
Goddamit you're all gonna die
Elton could pretty much write the same parody song about MAGAts today.
are we forgetting the 2020 bernie & warren boosters in the democrat primary who consider themselves american descendants of slaves &/or foundational black americans?
trump agreeing with them that kamala ain't black might end up being the margin he needs to win michigan, pennsylvania, & wisconsin & hand him the election.
Who are you?
Your use of "democrat" is enough for us to id you, troll.
We talkin' bout the same woman who went to Howard?
Right. You dreamin' red dreams. Time to wake up.
What are you talking about
A MAGA troll's got to do what a MAGA troll's got to do.
Trying to slam Harris by denying her the same trait that you emphasized to smear Obama. Discovered that it turns out that “black” is not quite the negative you were so sure it was in 2008? That’s one roomy clown car you guys have.
He doesn't plan to be hostile and condescending, he is that way naturally.
He wasn't treated as well as he is at his cult rallies, so of course he lashed out. Nobody treats DonOld like an ordinary person!
Why do the event? Because his supporters think its awesome when he insults people they hate to their face. Black journalists for goodness sake. Double enemy. Give them the business and tell them to fuck off.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
The real question is why they invited him. Because they are looking for a piece of the action?
Anyway, he really didn't mean to say she wasn't black. I'm sure there's an innocent explanation. He just doesn't understand biracial or something. Seeking to understand.
I'm just waiting for him to demand that Kamala return the political donation he gave her years ago! He might claim thst she got it under false pretenses.
Pretending to be a big man for his idiots.
And trying to get through talking to a black woman without having a mental breakdown.
Obviously failed.
I was thrilled to see him behave like he usually does. This interview is another nail in his political career coffin. Hopefully.
Not sure why he accepted. But he is nothing if not predictable. He behaved like he always does. Like a petulant five year old. He doesn't have a decent bone in his entire body.
And that makes her black? I don’t know how she has self-identified throughout her life, but Howard University, while “historically black” is not, and I suspect has not been exclusively black so simply attending Howard University does not make one black.
" Kamala Harris wanted to go to a black school. That’s what black folks called Howard University in the early 1980s when Harris was a teenager considering her future.
Harris, she would say later, was seeking an experience wholly different from what she had long known. She’d attended majority-white schools her entire life — from elementary school in Berkeley, Calif., to high school in Montreal. Her parents’ professional lives and their personal story were bound up in majority-white institutions. Her father, an economist from Jamaica, was teaching at Stanford University. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, had done her graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, where the couple had met and fallen in love. And Harris’s younger sister would eventually enroll at Stanford.
Harris wanted to be surrounded by black students, black culture and black traditions at the crown jewel of historically black colleges and universities."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/16/kamala-harris-grew-up-mostly-white-world-then-she-went-black-university-black-city/?arc404=true&itid=lk_inline_manual_20
I wonder how her mother's Indian culture affected Ms. Harris while she was growing up. While yeah, she's black, the Indian influence should not be ignored.
I in no way mean that as a negative BTW. There are a lot of Indian families in our area and there are a lot of things in the Indian cultures (its not just one, really) that are different from typical Anglo or Black culture..
I don't think you know what you're talking about and I don't think you do either.
Again, how does going to Howard make someone black? The Hispanic students who attend are thus black? Did attending Howard for her MFA make Rachel Dolezal black?
I’m not looking to claim that Kamala Harris isn’t black. I’m questioning Kevin’s logic.
Read the Wikipedia article. A neighbor took young Kamala and her sister to an African-American church. She was bused as an elementary-school kid to a formerly white school. At Howard she joined a historically-Black sorority.
The point was that she never ran away from her identity as a black woman. She embraced it. Trump acted like that wasn’t the case. He was lying in a manner that actually was repulsive.
"Again, how does going to Howard make someone black?"
I can see how you and Trump are getting confused, so I'll make this simple. Harris is black, because her dad is black. Now, maybe you didn't know this, but I'm betting Harris did, because she--unlike perhaps you and Trump--was aware of her father for her whole life. So it's worth taking her word for it, esp. since plenty of other folks corroborate it.
Further, going to Howard, a historically black university, is consistent with Harris identifying with and/or caring about that part of her heritage (as is made even more clear by Harris's own remarks on the subject).
Now, perhaps it's unfair to expect that you and Trump would know this about Harris--there are a lot of people in the world, and nobody knows everybody's background etc.--but reacting with suspicion and incredulity when others who have been paying attention inform you that, yup, Harris has both a black dad and a southeast asian mom just makes you and Trump look like a couple of belligerent dopes.
It's an HBCU - the B in HBCU is BLACK, the H is for Historically. She sought out an education to get in touch with that side of her heritage.
I think Jonathan Allen got this right
"But this is what Donald Trump wanted out of today. He has got, playing to his base, trying to push up energy and excitement from white males in the MAGA movement. He wanted this fight with Black journalists," he claimed.
He is sacrificing his standing, what little there was, with everyone else. Seems like a bad strategy just to win some points with people who are going to vote for you regardless of what bat ???? crazy things comes out of your mouth.
Agreed. If Trump at this late juncture is having "energy" troubles with his white male base, he's in more trouble than he realizes.
You're 100% right but this isn't the primary now. He needs to move towards the middle and get the independent vote but he can't help himself
"He wanted this fight with Black journalists,"
I mean, I guess. That doesn't explain why his campaign cut the event short. It's tempting to presume that whatever happened was what Trump wanted to happen, but (a) that just feeds into the likely extremely false narrative that Trump is any good at this and (b) even if it was what he wanted to happen, that doesn't mean that it was a good idea.
I mean, Trump could storm into an office, kick over the printer, shit on the floor, scream at a pregnant lady, and then storm out; it would be wrong to presume that since he seemed intentional about it that he both got what he wanted and accomplished something that helped him, even if some loudmouth randos on Truth Social praised him for it.
I'm not sure how this is different.
It was about motivating his numbskulls, and particularly about motivating the George Wallace vote, people who rarely or never vote, but who can be motivated to vote by racism. They cut it off at just the point where they got the obnoxious headlines they needed and they didn't need to make him look like more of an idiot.
Because everything is locked in and there are no persuadable voters left who might be appealed to by moderating your message, the only move for both candidates now is to inspire their own groups of marginal, never or almost-never voters into coming out for them.
It's all about motivating your group and de-motivating the other group.
And the long history of Republican crime is something I think Democrats could run on.
Yeah, Harris is descended from an ancestry of slavery in the Americas.
allegedly.
Listening to the clip makes it that much more worse. He's known her for a long time... indirectly? Jfc he's an idiot. He always claims to know everyone. He probably doesn't know about a tenth of them at all. The rest he's heard of in some way.
He once sent money for her campaign.
And now there's this, FWIW. The Daily Beast has this, also.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/kamala-harris-ex-ve-got-151802166.html
My favorite part:
"Someone should look into that."
I laughed at this line. He's used it before. He's such a clown. Does he actually think that her racial identity is something that needs looking into? The interviewer is heard saying she has always identified as black or something to that effect. He just seemed to ignore her. Which also makes him look bad. Over all I think it was very good... for Harris.
Obviously he's just asking for his buddies in the House to start a needed Congressional Investigation.
Trump “knows” she is not black because he contributed to her campaign when she was running for attorney general in California and he would never have done that if she was a …..
Listen, Trump is an expert. He knows a black when he sees one and Kamala is too well spoken to be a real black. /s
He used that same argument in regards to Native Americans when he was trying to get a casino license somewhere. I seem to remember a line that goes something like "they dont look like Indians to me". He's such a slimey piece of ????.
And now we know why he won't debate Harris.
This was probably someone's idea of a test run. I don't think he went there of his own accord. I'm going to guess someone is going to try to get him to not debate. Harris just needs to keep needling him till his ego forces him to.
I think this is an example of how Trump will shoot himself in the foot repeatedly throughout this campaign. It's a short campaign season, and all the sound bites he provides as fodder for the Harris campaign will be played repeatedly to hammer home what an incompetent, doddering fool he is to every independent voter. They will have the desired effect of showing Trump for who he is. Placed alongside well-pitched attacks on his policies and their results, I think the Harris people will continue to find their candidate rising in the polls.
????
No. He;'s playing to win, using the tools he has and that have proven effective. Problem is, he's out of his depth now. What people better face up to is he's a New York fighter. He won't give up, and he will find an angle and work it. Do not underestimate this guy.
"Do not underestimate this guy."
By the same token, don't overestimate this guy. He's not a strategic thinker--he's more like a rat or a racoon: you don't want to turn your back on him, since he's reasonably clever at wriggling his way into places he shouldn't be and then making a mess of them, but he's not thinking moves ahead and laying traps.
He's got a limited playbook, and is a dummy on top of that. Pretending he's some supervillain may be fun or comforting, but the reality is that he's a dolt with a small fanbase.
Yeah, I keep coming back to Charlie Sykes's line: a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower. Trump is that clown.
Kevin:"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 hostile and condescending is his shtick...along with creeping out/assaulting women,running endless cons, bullying, screaming, lying about everything, blaming everybody else, taking credit for everything.....you know, Captain BoneSpurs with the super power of turning gold into lead..
Silly question.
It’s also interesting how he just keeps talking over the interviewer and they let him. Of course, I don’t know what they should do. Maybe just keep talking with him?
Crazy…
Oops, I meant “weird”
Maybe bat shit crazy weird?
or ....
weirdly, bat shit crazy
This guy used to claim Swedish ancestry on his father's side, but now he's German. Someone should look into that.
Yep, the whole family, as attracted as trump's father was by the Klan & American Nazis, didn't want business to be hampered by their Germanic name, so Drumpf became Trump - so much better in huge gold letters, & some cover when a link to Germany wasn't viewed favorably by all Americans.
I am starting to think that t-Rump is slowly slipping back behind the curtain and ‘bow out’ so he won’t have to lose to Kamala. Maybe an infected ear that drops off.
OK, Trump is a complete jerk. But he doesn't much discriminate when it comes to name calling. Remember Rex Tillerson was "dumb as a rock", Jack Smith is a "thug", and Bill Barr a fat pig, etc.. All white men. But if you like Trump, it doesn't matter what race you are. Herschel Walker was truly dumb as a rock, but Trump supported him because Walker liked Trump.. And Trump is fine now with Tim Scott, now that Scott has declared his love and devotion.
Let's be indignant for maybe 30 seconds and move on. This is all par for the course.
I disagree. We should highlight his racism (this wasn't mere "name-calling") again and again. And again.
Some of the polling suggested Trump had made inroads among voters of color. It would be good to make sure that doesn't happen.
Politics 101.
It's also weird that the leader of the "DEI is destroying the US" party had to ask to have DEI explained to him, and even then was too dumb to understand what they were talking about.
Trump may be anti DEI, but he supports affirmative action. At least he supports the $700,000,000 of affirmative action Fred Trump provided him. Without it he would have ended up selling used cars in Queens.
Enough of Trump’s hardline backers are hostile and condescending enough that they see nothing wrong with what he said. The rest of us are just too sensitive.
Of all the times you're supposed to use snark, THIS IS THAT MOMENT.
"I can't make up my mind if Trump actually believes his bullshit or his tiny brain actually believes anyone believes his bullshit."
Tiny hands … tiny thoughts…
He's trying to imply to his numbskulls that 'she's smarter than I am so she can't really be black so she's faking it' because the few black people who were ever going to vote for him have now mostly lost interest and he needs to win them back somehow.
And, as everyone knows, conservatives are the only real authorities on who can be an actual black person.
Wow - in that venue … but not unexpected. He thinks his hate can win? Or that is all he has left…..
plz let’s have that debate - even if on Fox. He’ll lose there too.
Give the guy credit for his New York balls. He walked in there and did his thing. Nothing against the moderators, but folks just haven't figured out yet how to deal with him on his level. Never mind the "not going to lower myself" bullshit; at some point someone's going to have to stand up to him and not back down and out this little bitch for who he really is.
"Give the guy credit for his New York balls"
Wtf? Would you similarly give ball-credit to an adult who goes to an eight-year-old's birthday party and gets into a shouting match with a child? The point isn't "wow, Trump has the guts to violate social mores!," it's that Trump is a big dummy who picks stupid racist fights even when its in his best interests to not do that.
Chris LaCivita and Susie Miles did this, I think.
Trump doesn't care. So far he's got 70 people placed in election offices in swing states to challenge the votes if it doesn't go his way. I'm sure they'll get as many as they think they need.
If it has to be sent to the House for the one state-one vote crap or if it has to go to the Supremes, they take over the government.
Sad, but very likely. They will not accept losing.
The people sitting in the auditorium with him weren't the audience for how he acted. Remember, trump is always playing to *his* people, not to broaden his appeal. The only possible exception is if the force of his personality brings in some more of *his* people, but that's activating latent agreement, not widening the net. And in order to do that he needs to go a little deeper into the psyche every time.
The sound bites he got out of this appearance are part of the pitch. They're meant to show that he's willing to go into the lion's very own den and like an Old Testament prophet, upbraid them to their very faces. Total bullshit, but that's how he's going to use this. "They couldn't even tell me what DEI is, just threw the words back at me."
Remember "Pocahontas"? Same play here. Harris is like Warren, he's saying; she claims to be whatever identity gets an advantage and can't even stick with it, picks whatever identity gets the bigger advantage that day. A racial opportunist, in short, and this didn't just occur to him because apparently that line was also featured at a rally in PA today.
Campos at LGM has what strikes me as a pretty decent explanation how this works for *his* people, and the gist of it is that this is the campaign's response to the "weird" framing-- trump's people are the normal ones, not weird at all, and the identity-shifters are the *real* weirdos you can't trust because they want to be able to change any aspect of their identities any time they feel like it. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/07/theyre-going-all-in-with-the-kamala-harris-isnt-really-black-thing
Campos doesn't say this, but I'll extrapolate and say their response to Harris and the "weird" framing is to make this at base a fight over whether there are fixed categories in this life or not. They are always all about making binary distinctions, sheep from goats, *with* trump or *enemy* of trump, right and wrong, and this approach is playing with a core belief of his own people that a lot of others who aren't MAGA have without articulating it. The aim would be to activate it in some who aren't MAGA yet, and strengthen it among the MAGA.
If that's the picture, this appearance is part of the coordinated riposte they've been cooking up over the past 10 days, part of the roll-out, and we can expect to see a whole hell of a lot more of it over the next dozen weeks.
I don't see how it helps them in areas where they're not getting much support, but it fits trump's pattern of always raising the stakes, building the pressure, going deeper and more elemental, forcing decisions, whenever he runs into any kind of obstacle or resistance. He didn't just blunder into this event. He's testing the pillars of the Temple, always his way, and perfectly willing to test the cohesion of civil society to destruction if he thinks that'll get him what he wants.
FWIW, his formulation that he is the best President for Black people since Lincoln as he slowed down the flood of Hispanic immigrants is pretty damn insulting to Black people. The implication is that the only jobs they are suited for are low wage, manual labor jobs that don't require speaking English. It is all the more ludicrous when you consider that the Roberts court has gutted voting rights legislation passed by previous Presidents and signed off on schemes designed to disenfranchise Black voters.