Kamala Harris trashed Donald Trump’s remarks to the National Association of Black Journalists convention, labeling his behavior as divisive and disrespectful.
“It was the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect,” Harris said while speaking at the Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority’s 60th Biennial Boule. The quote was obtained by Deadline.
“And 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 with hostility and anger when 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,” she added.
Her statement comes on the heals of Trump’s combative interview earlier in the day, in which he falsely claimed the Harris only recently began identifying as Black.
Trump alleged his Democratic rival — whose father is a Jamaican immigrant and whose mother was from India — only began claiming her Black heritage to win political points.
“She was Indian all the way,” he added, repeatedly mispronouncing Harris’s first name. “And then she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
The White House quickly responded to Trump’s outrageous attacks on Harris, calling the remarks “repulsive.”
“No one has any right to tell someone who they are,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman.
The Harris campaign said the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has always proudly identified as a Black person, noting she attended a historically Black university and belongs to a historically Black sorority.