“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
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.
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- 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.
- She slept her way to the top. Donald Trump was a failed businessman with six bankruptcies, five draft deferments, three baby mamas, and two divorces when he ran for president. And after paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and $150,000 to a Playboy Playmate that he slept with while his wife was pregnant, twice-divorced, convicted felon, and adjudicated rapist, Donald Trump is the last person to be talking about anyone’s sexual history.
- She never accomplished anything. As a prosecutor, Kamala Harris put murderers and abusers behind bars. As attorney general, she went after the big banks and won $20 billion for homeowners. As vice president, she took on the big drug companies to cap the cost of insulin for seniors. And we’ve now seen 15.7 million new jobs and the lowest Black unemployment and poverty rates in history since she took office.
- She can’t win. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. They won with Obama, a Black guy with a Muslim name, and Hillary Clinton, a white woman who had been vilified for decades. Unfortunately, the skewed electoral college system gave Republicans the victory in two of those eight contests, but the results still prove that the country is on our side. It just means we have to turn out in record numbers to overcome the electoral college bias.
That’s it for now. Many more lies to debunk in the coming months. But if Trump has something to say about Kamala Harris, as she said in Atlanta this week, say it to her face.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
The post 10 Big Lies Trump and the Republicans Tell About Kamala Harris appeared first on Word In Black.
