Unpacking Trump's "birther" attack on Kamala Harris: It's even worse than it looks

Earlier this week, Donald Trump — the man who has been called America’s "first White president," appeared at the Chicago convention of the National Association of Black Journalists for a Q&A session moderated by ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott, Semafor reporter Kadia Goba and Fox News host Harris Faulkner. This event has already become legendary.

The decision by NABJ leadership to host the multiply-convicted and twice-impeached former president was met with great controversy. Conference co-chair Karen Attiah resigned in protest. At MSNBC, Ja'han Jones writes that the group "faced a deluge of denunciations from journalists and activists" for offering a platform to a man "who has denigrated the free press, spread racist propaganda and repeatedly insulted Black journalists." In fact, Jones continues, NABJ has repeatedly denounced "Trump’s illiberal behavior and attacks on its members," yet still hosted an event at which an "audience full of journalists" was not permitted to ask questions.  

Almost every day, I become further convinced that the Age of Trump is a simulation run amok, perhaps run by an alien civilization who are fans of Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks,” but fail to grasp McGruder’s underlying intelligence and wit.

Trump, unsurprisingly, was more than an hour late for the event. I was reminded of his 2016 no-show rally and near-riot at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an important portent of the way so-called political norms would be shattered during his rise to power.

The NABJ Conference does not carry the same “historic” weight, but it's important for what it signals about how low Donald Trump and his MAGA forces will sink to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris. It also offers further evidence that even nine years after Trump's infamous escalator ride, the mainstream news media is largely incapable of effectively confronting him.

To put it another way, Trump's NABJ appearance was a hot mess.

The first question for Trump was from Rachel Scott, who asked the ex-president why Black voters should trust him considering his repeated use of racist rhetoric: “You have used words like 'animal' and 'rabid' to describe Black district attorneys. You've attacked Black journalists — calling them a loser, saying the questions that they asked are quote, 'stupid' and 'racist.’" 

Trump responded in kind. "I don't think I've ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner," he said. "You don't even say, 'Hello, how are you?' I think it's disgraceful ... I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country, I've done so much for the Black population of this country.”

In typical fashion, he failed to respond to the “ugly and rude” question, saying he had been invited under false pretenses, complaining that Harris was not present and that the sound system was not working properly. He also didn't respond to direct questions about immigration, the economy, his choice of Sen. JD Vance as running mate and various other things. He Trump complained, lied, obfuscated, made grandiose claims and veered off on irrelevant tangents. He also made the ridiculous claim that he has done at least as much for Black America as Abraham Lincoln, and then defended the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, his 2021 coup attempt and the Big Lie that somehow Joe Biden and the Democrats had stolen the 2020 election. 

But it wasn't any of those things, or Trump's claim that he is a protector of "Black jobs," that made headlines. That moment came when Trump, a 78-year-old white man, wondered aloud about whether Kamala Harris counts as a Black American, according to his imagined standards.

Here is the now infamous quotation: “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?”

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, to a Black father and an Indian-American mother. She identifies as a Black woman, belongs to a Black sorority and attended Howard University, perhaps the most prestigious of historically Black universities. In the Senate, she belonged to the Congressional Black Caucus. She is the first Black vice president, as well as the first Indian-American and first woman vice president. In short, Trump’s claim is not just a lie. It is a racist, white supremacist lie pulled from the same bucket as his "birther" attacks on Barack Obama. 

A new report from Media Matters documents how the right-wing disinformation machine has attacked Harris’ racial identity as somehow inauthentic for several years. Following Trump’s Wednesday NABJ session, his propagandists and agents were spouting birtherism 2.0 conspiracy theories across right-wing social media.

At a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority event in Houston, Harris responded with dignity, describing Trump's rhetoric as “the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect. Let me just say, the American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who does not respond to hostility and anger with confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”

It's worth adding here that on Tuesday, Trump previewed his racial-authenticity Olympics by agreeing with a right-wing radio host that Doug Emhoff, Harris' husband, was a “horrible Jew.” Trump has refused to reject the repeated claims by MAGA Republicans and the right-wing echo chamber that Harris was a “DEI hire" as vice president. That's the latest racist epithet of the post-civil rights era, along the lines of “quota queen,” “affirmative action hire“ or "unqualified Black," replacing the well-known six-letter word it is no longer acceptable to utter in public.

Does Trump really believe that Kamala Harris (and others who presumably want to become "Black" for unknown reason) have a version of the race-changing machine from George Schuyler's 1931 novel “Black No More”? Of course not. Trump's rhetoric was aimed at his followers and true believers, not the people in that room or the mainstream media — which is now engaged in amateur theater criticism and endless discussion of the "optics" of Trump's remarks. What will this mean, or not mean, in terms of polls, public opinion and the horserace leading to the November election? These are the largely irrelevant or obsolete tools of normal political discourse in a time of existential crisis: Trump has promised to be a dictator and to imprison or persecute his political enemies.

On that stage in Chicago, Rachel Scott and Kadia Goba earnestly tried to achieve the goal of speaking truth to power. They confronted Trump with facts, and tried to get him to make substantive statements about public policy. But that approach simply does not work with demagogues like Trump.

Ultimately, the NABJ conference was just another stage upon which Donald Trump could perform. His real goal at that event was to go into the metaphorical lion's den and demonstrate, to the delight of his MAGA followers, how strong and bold he is.

He largely accomplished that goal. He is a high-dominance leader and aspiring dictator. Trump did not pivot or back down at the NABJ. He was clear, certain and unapologetic in his beliefs. Trump’s MAGA people were likely thrilled by his "transgressive" or “naughty” remarks, and his violation of "woke" norms about race. Whatever one may think about Donald Trump, it is hard to deny that there is a certain honesty and directness to his behavior. For Trump’s followers, his unwillingness to restrain his worst impulses or to self-censor is a principal reason why they adore him.

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As MSNBC host Joy Reid explained the NABJ appearance, Trump wanted "to create clips to play for his very white, very right-wing MAGA fan base of him standing up to the Blacks."

In a post on X/Twitter, Wajahat Ali offered a slightly different and perhaps more optimistic gloss:

Republicans know they're in trouble. Yes, Trump animates his base with the ugly vitriol and cheap shots. They'll love his unhinged performance at #NABJ24. But it doesn't bring in new people. It actively repulses young voters, women, people of color and swing voters. Now you add the human couch known as JD Vance and his zombie charisma and the policies behind Project 2025 and the rogue Supreme Court and the overturning of Roe.

As I watched Donald Trump perform at the NABJ conference and its aftermath, I imagined Trump as a child setting off a box of fireworks in a movie theater or some other crowded place, and enjoying the panic and chaos that then unfolds. 

The mainstream media and much of the Democratic Party are now obsessed with Trump's rebooted birtherism — the controversy of the day, feeding the insatiable maw of the news cycle — rather than focusing on his plans to be an American Hitler who rules with an iron fist. His birther attacks on Kamala Harris are an outgrowth of the MAGA movement’s neofascist plans and its hatred of multiracial democracy. They should be discussed in that context.

After his performance at the NABJ conference, Donald Trump took a victory lap on his Truth Social disinformation platform: “The questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!" Then his campaign issued a menacing official statement, opening with the preposterous claim that, unlike Harris and Biden, Trump is "running to be President for ALL Americans":

Members of the media need to make a decision, and answer if their goal is to unite the Country or further divide us, because based on the unhinged and unprofessional commentary directed toward President Trump today by certain members of the media, many media elites clearly want to see us remain divided. This is unacceptable….

Today’s biased and rude treatment from certain hostile members of the media will backfire massively. You would think that the media would have learned something from their repeat episodes of fake outrage ever since President Trump first came down the escalator in 2015, but some just refuse to “get it.” This will be their undoing in 2024.

Donald Trump, in yet another echo of the Nazi era, has repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people” and suggested that freedom of speech is unpatriotic. If he wins the 2024 election and tries to establish America's first true dictatorship, his regime will seek to curtail the Bill of Rights and its protections for freedom of speech and other civil rights and liberties. Trump and his forces are entirely clear in their plans — “hostile members” of the press will see their behavior “backfire massively,” leading to "their undoing." This is a threat to everyone with a public platform who fails to submit to the coming MAGA regime.