NEW YORK (AP) ā has found tremendous success from the very first moment he stepped onto the presidential stage by stoking racial animus.
Democrats expressed new outrage this week at the former president's that Vice President , who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, only recently āturned Blackā for political gain. Some Republicans ā even from within Trump's own campaign ā seemed to distance themselves from the comment.
But Trumpās rhetoric this week, and his record on race since he entered politics nearly a decade ago, indicate that divisive attacks on race may emerge as a core GOP argument in the three-month sprint to Election Day ā whether his allies want them to or not.
A Trump adviser, granted anonymity Thursday to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign doesnāt need to focus on āidentity politicsā because the case against Harris is that she is āso liberal itās dangerous.ā The adviser pointed to Harrisā record on the Southern border, crime, the economy and foreign policy.
In a sign that Trump may not be coordinating his message with his own team, the Republican presidential nominee doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harrisā racial identity. He posted on his social media site a picture of Harris donning traditional Indian attire in a family photo.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has endorsed Trump, was among a number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Thursday that the rhetoric around race and identity is not āhelpful to anyoneā this election cycle.
āPeopleās skin color doesnāt matter one iota,ā Lummis said in an interview.
Trump turned to an old tactic against Harris
It's been less than two weeks after President Joe Biden . Trump has had to pivot from campaigning against an 81-year-old white man to facing a 59-year-old Black woman who is and .
Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday. In an appearance carried live on cable news and shared widely online, he falsely suggested misled voters about .
āI didnāt 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 donāt know, is she Indian or is she Black?ā Trump said Wednesday.
At a Pennsylvania rally hours later, Trumpās team displayed years-old news headlines describing Harris as the āfirst Indian-American senatorā on the big screen in the arena. And Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump's running mate, told reporters traveling with him that Harris was a āchameleonā who changed her identity when convenient.
Harris attended Howard University, the historically Black institution where she pledged the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and has often talked throughout her career about being both about being Black and Indian American.
Trump's team argued that his message on race is part of a broader pitch that may appeal to some Black voters, although very few allies defended his specific rhetoric this week.
āWhat impacts our historic gains with Black voters is President Trumpās record when compared to Kamalaās," said Trump campaign senior adviser Lynne Patton, pointing to the ācost of living, securing the border, deporting Kamalaās illegal aliens, making neighborhoods safe again and keeping men out of womenās sports.ā
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he explored racial politics during a Wednesday focus group with swing voters almost immediately after Trumpās interview. He found that Harris may be vulnerable to criticism based on her gender, but race-based attacks could hurt Trump among the voters that matter most this fall.
Much has changed, Luntz said, since Trump rose to prominence by questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president.
āTrump seems to think that he can criticize her for how sheās dealt with her race. Well, no oneās listening to that criticism. It simply doesnāt matter,ā Luntz said. āIf itās racially driven, it will backfire.ā
Eugene Craig, the former vice chair of the Maryland Republican Party, said that Trump āgot what he wantedā at the NABJ convention but that the substance of his argument risked being more offensive than appealing.
āThe one thing that Black folks will never tolerate is disrespecting Blackness, and that goes for Black Republicans too,ā said Craig, who is Black and worked as a staffer for conservative pundit Dan Bonginoās 2012 Senate campaign. He is now supporting Harris.
Trump has a long history of racist attacks
Trump has frequently used race to go after his opponents since he stepped into presidential politics nearly a decade ago.
Trump was perhaps the most famous member of questioning where Obama was born. He kicked off his first campaign by and later questioned whether a U.S. federal judge of Mexican heritage .
While in the White House, Trump in Charlottesville, Virginia, and suggested that the U.S. including Haiti and parts of Africa. In August 2020, he suggested Harris, who was born in California, might not meet the Constitution's eligibility requirements to be vice president.
And just two weeks after formally entering the 2024 campaign, he at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Trump won in 2016 but lost reelection in 2020 to Biden by close margins in several swing states. He swept the 2024 Republican primary even while facing a raft of criminal charges.
Some Trump critics worried that his racial strategy might resonate with a significant portion of the electorate anyway. Voters will decide in November whether to send a Black woman to the Oval Office for the first time in the nation's nearly 250-year history.
āI hope Trumpās attacks on Harris are just him flailing about ineffectively. But put together Trumpās shamelessness, his willingness to lie, his demagogic talent, and the issue of race ā and a certain amount of liberal complacency that Trump is just foolish ā and Iām concerned,ā Bill Kristol, a leading conservative anti-Trump voice, posted on social media Thursday.
The Harris campaign thinks there's little upside for Trump
A Harris adviser described the moment as an opportunity to remind voters of the chaos and division that Trump breeds. But the adviser, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to engage with Trump's attacks on race at the expense of the campaign's broader focus on key policies.
So long as the campaign does not get distracted, the adviser said, Harris' team believes there is little political upside for Trump to continue attacking Harris' racial identity.
Harris told a gathering of a historically Black sorority on Wednesday that Trump's attack was āthe same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect.ā
On the ground in at least one swing state, however, there were signs that Trumpās approach may be resonating ā at least among the former presidentās white male base.
Jim Abel, a 65-year-old retiree who attended a rally for Vance in Arizona on Wednesday, said he agreed with Trumpās focus on Harrisā racial identity.
āSheās not Black,ā Abel said. āIāve seen her parents. Iāve pictures of her and her family and sheās not Black. Sheās looking for the Black vote.ā
But several high-profile Republican voices disagreed.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted on X a picture of a road sign with two directions. One led to, āAttack Kamala's record, lies and radicalism," while the other, āIs she really Black?ā
āI dunno guys, I just think that maybe winning the 2024 election might be more important than having this silly and meaningless conversation,ā Shapiro wrote.
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Brown reported from Chicago. AP writers Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri in Washington; and Gabriel Sandoval in Glendale, Arizona, contributed to this report.
Steve Peoples And Matt Brown, The Associated Press
