Donald Trump just finished speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists, and it went exactly as you might expect — a hot mess. After attacking ABC reporter Rachel Scott as “rude,” Trump threw out a flurry of lies and misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris.
So, allow me to debunk some of his lies, and a few others, about Kamala Harris.
- She’s not really Black. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black,” Trump told NABJ, “and now she wants to be known as Black.”
Not true. “I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black. I was born Black. I will die Black,” Harris told the Breakfast Club in 2019. She didn’t change her identity. Her father was always Jamaican. And she’s always been connected to the Black community, which is why she graduated from Howard University and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. - She’s a failed border czar. “She’s the worst border czar in the history of the world,” Trump told NABJ today.
First, she was never a border czar. Her job was to focus on the root causes of immigration. Second, if she was the border czar, she could take credit that border crossings are lower now than they were when Trump left office. Third, if you want a more secure border, then blame Trump, who killed the bipartisan immigration deal because he didn’t want to give President Biden a win before the election. And by the way, whatever happened to Trump’s wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for? - She’s a “DEI hire.” Trump told NABJ that Harris “could be” a DEI hire, echoing racist remarks from Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett, who said, “100 percent, she was a DEI hire.”
DEI hire has become the new GOP slur, replacing “affirmative action candidate,” which replaced the N-word, but they all mean the same thing. Harris has been a district attorney, an attorney general, a United States senator, and a vice president. Trump was a game show host when he ran for president. Yet Republicans don’t question his credentials or those of his running mate, J.D. Vance, a 39-year-old freshman senator who just got to Congress last year. - She’s not eligible to run. Republicans claim Harris is ineligible to be president because her parents were not born in America.
First of all, she was born in Oakland, California, and the Constitution doesn’t require that your parents be born in the U.S. Second, Trump’s own mother was born in Scotland, but I guess those made-up rules only apply to Black candidates. - She’s a “San Francisco liberal.” Republicans have released a new ad attacking Kamala Harris as a “San Francisco liberal.”
They’re so stuck in the past that they’re resurrecting an attack line from 1984 when Jeane Kirkpatrick coined the term “San Francisco Democrats” as a not-so-subtle homophobic slur. But that was 40 years ago; it’s time for new material, guys. If Harris was such a San Francisco liberal, why did Donald Trump donate $6,000 to her past campaigns? - She’s soft on crime. Republicans claim that Harris is not tough enough on crime, but she’s a prosecutor, but they’re literally supporting a convicted criminal as their presidential nominee. Case closed.
- She’s a cop who locked up thousands of innocent Black men. Now, come on, folks, she can’t be “too tough on crime” and “too soft on crime” at the same time.
But here’s the truth. As a district attorney, Harris implemented a “Back on Track” program to help young, nonviolent offenders with education and job training. When she was attorney general, California became the first statewide law enforcement agency in the country to mandate officers wear body cameras. And she’s a longtime opponent of the death penalty, even when it wasn’t easy. True, prosecutors make tough decisions that piss people off on both sides, but to caricature her as “too tough” or “too soft” on crime is just too simplistic.
St. Louis native Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer and CNN political commentator.