Trump’s first try at pivoting to Harris blows up in his face

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday took his first big swing Wednesday at the revamped Democratic ticket — and it did not go well for him.

Trump participated in a controversial live interview at a convention of Black journalists in Chicago and quickly stumbled into racially insensitive remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris as he questioned her identity and qualifications.

When asked about Republicans who say Harris, the first woman of Black and Asian ancestry to serve as vice president, was chosen for the role in a nod to diversity, Trump instead suggested Harris only recently “became” Black.

“She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said, prompting audible gasps and murmurs, according to reporters in the room. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago until she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”

Trump continued to make the same point about Harris’ ancestry even as one of the moderators, ABC News’ Rachel Scott, interjected that Harris attended an historically Black college and has always identified as Black.

“She was Indian all the way and then all of the sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” Trump said.

His remarks, one of many tense exchanges in a Q&A session at the National Association of Black Journalists, underscored the Trump campaign’s floundering efforts to blunt the momentum of Harris since President Joe Biden agreed to drop his reelection bid.

The interview marked Trump’s first major attempt to pivot a campaign designed to defeat Biden toward a younger and more challenging opponent, and laid bare the difficulties the Republican nominee and his movement more broadly may have in taking on a woman of color without veering into misogynistic, racist invective. While many in Trump’s base may agree with his blunt assessment of Harris as a political token, it may reinforce the former president’s vulnerabilities with swing voters heading into the final stretch of what looks to be a very close election.

Just hours after the event, Trump appeared to double down on the idea that people of mixed backgrounds can’t identify as more than one ethnicity, posting a video on his Truth Social account showing Harris, in his words, “saying she’s Indian, not Black” and calling her a “stone cold phony.”

Harris’ campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a “Statement on Donald Trump Showing Exactly Who He Is at NABJ” that the former president’s “tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”

Trump’s comments about Harris’ mixed heritage drew an immediate rebuke from the White House, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was read Trump’s quote questioning Harris’ race during a press briefing.

“As a person of color, as a Black woman in this position … what he just said, what you just read out to me is repulsive, it’s insulting,” Jean-Pierre said in response. “No one has any right to tell someone how they identify. “

But at least one Republican was incensed by the comments.

"Nobody's helping the voters out here by talking about the substance of the issue which we should be focusing on,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

While Murkowski has long soured on Trump’s candidacy, she chastised the GOP ticket’s cultural commentary, including Sen. JD Vance’s remarks that women who don’t reproduce are “childless cat ladies.”

“We're getting spun up about cats and children. And now how somebody looks,” she said. "Does it make any difference how much Polish ancestry versus Irish versus whatever else it is that I have in me? Why are we talking about this?"

Trump’s entire 34-minute exchange with Scott and two other journalists on stage was contentious, as the GOP nominee groused about not being able to hear the questions, a delayed start that he blamed on the conference’s own technical problems and Harris’ decision not to appear before the National Association of Black Journalists.

In his most watched public appearance since Harris took over for Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump’s coarse, cutting and at times snappish responses, including calling one of Scott’s questions “nasty,” showed him to be very much the same person he has always been despite the assassination attempt earlier this month that he initially claimed had changed his outlook and approach.

The interview, which began an hour late, was supposed to go for an hour. But it abruptly ended after 34 minutes, which moderator Kadia Goba of Semafor said was at the behest of Trump’s campaign.

But by that point, the damage had been done.

“Looking forward to the editorials calling for @realDonaldTrump to get out of the race following today’s performance,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, posted from his personal account on X.

Anthony Scaramucci , the venture capitalist and former Trump ally who served as his White House communications director for 11 days, posted: “Whoever told him to do this interview should be fired.”

Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton, who appeared on CNN moments after Trump walked off the stage in Chicago, was even more blunt: “You need to be careful with this crap,” he warned. “As far as every Black person in America is concerned, she is Black. … To question the vice president’s ethnicity — I can’t even say what I really want to say about this.”

He added: “I think a lot of Black people will watch this appearance and then they will point to the former president and they will point to the Republican Party and say this is why we will never give you all the majority of our support.”

Harris’ campaign, in a sign of just how damaging they believed Trump’s performance may have been to his own efforts to woo Black voters and independents, blasted out eight different clips from the interview, including Trump’s use of the term “Black jobs” and his inability to defend Vance in response to multiple questions about his past comments maligning “childless cat ladies” and his readiness to lead on day one.

“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Trump said. “Typically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference. You’re voting for the president.”

Trump also attacked Harris as Biden’s “border czar,” repeated his desire to pardon those convicted of crimes for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol and asserted that Black voters should vote Republican primarily for economic reasons.

But those comments were overshadowed by the former president’s indelicate churlishness on racial matters.

Trump took issue with the first question he was asked, as Scott ticked off a number of past comments that many have seen as racist: questioning former President Barack Obama’s American citizenship, telling four congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from, describing Black district attorneys as animals and attacking Black journalists for questions he deemed “stupid.”

“Why should Black voters trust you after you’ve used language like that?” Scott said.

Trump responded defensively: “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner.” He called ABC a “fake news network” and dismissed Scott’s question as “disgraceful.”

But his response to the DEI question moments later only further clarified why it had been asked.

Eugene Daniels and Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.