Trump's lazy racism against Harris won't earn him votes. He already has racists in the bag.
Donald Trump has two settings: “racist” and “off.”
That he has swiftly launched racial attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, his presumptive presidential election opponent, should come as no surprise. That he did so Wednesday in front of a room full of Black journalists at a Chicago convention was on brand. And that he followed it up by doubling down on his scurrilous lie that she “happened to turn Black” was as predictable as the tides.
By Thursday, he was sharing a conspiracy theorist’s social media post that alleged to show Harris’ birth certificate and falsely claimed “Kamala Harris is NOT black and never has been.”
Trump falls back on tired racist tropes as he struggles against Harris
It’s all ludicrous garbage, a reminder that Trump exists in the political realm only because he bolstered the insidious “birther” movement during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, leaning full racist into dopey theories that Obama was somehow not an American.
It was stupid, ignorant, fearmongering back then. Now, 16 years later, with what feels like a lifetime of Trump’s ceaseless racism under our belts, it’s just boring. And repetitive. And, dare I say, weird.
It’s even weirder for young voters who were kids in the Obama years and now see this kind of “other-izing” behavior for what it is: cruel and pathetically dated.
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Trump and some supporters seem baffled by Harris' biracial identity
Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican man and an Indian American woman, and she has, as The New York Times put it, “consistently identified as Black in public life and long before she entered the national stage.”
She has spoken proudly of her Indian heritage as well. She’s biracial, something Trump and other MAGA supporters seem to be struggling with. It’s like imagining cavemen circling an iPhone and poking it with a stick.
Trump is still a racist: Trump's racism at NABJ was revolting. It was all calculated for his MAGA fan base.
Trump said of Harris on Wednesday: “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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?”
Lord have mercy, is this really what we’re going to be doing for the next few months? Listening to an ignorant old white man maliciously pretend he doesn’t understand what it means to be of mixed race? Heck, Trump is half-jerk, half-bigot; you’d think he’d be able to figure it out.
Trump doubles down on racism, obviously
But sure enough, by the time he arrived at a Pennsylvania rally after launching his racial attack on Harris, there was a screen in the arena showing a Business Insider headline that read: “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian American U.S. senator.”
And off we go, driven into the depths by Trump’s worst instincts. He believes he represents a white America that was once pure and perfect and has now been ruined by “others.” He uses the word “diversity” as a slur.
He even started using similar tactics on a fellow Republican, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, during the GOP primary. Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants, and her given first name is Nimarata. Trump started referring to her as "Nimbra" and "Nimrada," an obnoxious attempt to allege she was different (wink, wink) from real (wink, wink) Americans.
These tired-old-racist tricks are despicable, but also profoundly boring. And for as hard as people pushed against it during the 2016 election when Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, the voters of 2024 – more diverse, younger and more accepting of multiculturalism – will push back harder.
Imagine supporting Vance: Nobody likes JD Vance and his 'cat lady' misogyny. Trump needs to dump him, fast.
Trump only knows how to attack, so expect ample racism ahead
Harris’ poll numbers have surged since she rose to the top of the Democratic ticket. Many voters like her, and people who might find her heritage “strange” or “confusing” are far fewer than Trump seems to suspect.
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There are plenty of racists out there in America, but racism will not earn Trump a single vote. He already has them in the bag.
Rekindling birther-esque conspiracies and hammering away at Harris’ biracial background will do only one thing. It will show decent voters, young and old, exactly what Trump is: unconscionably cruel and boring as hell.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's lazy, racist conspiracy theories on Harris won't work now
