Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday called former President Trump’s false claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are stealing and eating pets “a crying shame” and sharply criticized her opponent for “spewing lies that are grounded in tropes that are age-old.”
Harris, speaking in Philadelphia at a panel hosted by the National Assn. of Black Journalists, said Trump had a long history of using racist tropes — and of discriminating against Black people in particular.
She cited several examples of Trump’s controversial actions regarding race, including his “birther” lies that questioned former President Obama’s birthplace, alleged racial discrimination against Black families at Trump’s housing developments, and his support for the death penalty for defendants in the 1989 case of the Central Park Five, the five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted — and later exonerated — in the beating and rape of a white female jogger.
“This is not new,” Harris said. “This is not new in terms of these tropes. This is not new in terms of where it’s coming from.”
Harris was speaking on a panel moderated by three Black journalists before a live audience that included NABJ members and journalism students attending historically Black colleges and universities.
In July, Trump spoke during NABJ’s annual convention in Chicago, taking part in a contentious interview with three Black female reporters in which he questioned the Black identity of Harris, who is the biracial daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants.
Trump falsely accused Harris of shifting her racial and ethnic identity over time, contending that, for years, Harris “was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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?”
“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t,” said Trump, whose remarks on that subject and others drew boos and cheers.
Harris’ office said at the time that she did not attend the NABJ convention because she had a scheduling conflict.
On Tuesday, Harris’ most pointed criticism of her opponent followed a question by Eugene Daniels, the White House correspondent for Politico, about the verbal attacks by Trump, his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and their allies on Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Schools and government buildings in the small city have been evacuated amid a rash of bomb threats, many coming from overseas, as Trump and Vance continue to repeat their false claims that Haitian immigrants have been eating dogs and cats. Trump has referred to those immigrants as being in the country illegally, but they are predominantly legal U.S. residents.
“It’s a crying shame, literally, what’s happening to those families, those children in that community,” Harris said.
Harris said her “heart breaks” for Haitians in Springfield.
“There were children, elementary school children who — it was school photo day; you remember what that’s like, going to school on picture day? — who were dressed up in their best, got all ready, knew what they were gonna wear the night before — and had to be evacuated. Children. Children! A whole community put in fear,” she said.
Harris said she believes that the American people want to move on from Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” and that they want to say: “This is exhausting, and it’s harmful, and it’s hateful and grounded in some age-old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for.”
On his Truth Social account, Trump in recent days has shared memes with images depicting himself rescuing animals and one with a group of kittens holding a sign that reads: “Don’t Let Them Eat us. Vote for Trump.”
His son Donald Trump Jr., in an interview with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week, made a racist claim that Haitians were less intelligent than people from other countries, saying: “You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average IQ — if you import the Third World into your country, you’re going to become the Third World.”
In the interview, Harris defended the economic policies of the current administration, saying that she and President Biden entered office at a time of economic turmoil, with high unemployment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The country’s economic woes, she said, were due in large part to “mismanagement by the former president.”
“Is the price of groceries still too high? Yes,” she said. “Do we have more work to do? Yes. And I will tell you, I do believe that I offer a new generation of leadership for our country.”
In a statement Tuesday, Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, said Harris “admitted today that she has failed Black Americans,” adding that because of “her failed policies, grocery prices are too high and the American Dream is unattainable for young Americans.”
Harris also told the interviewers that she called Trump after the apparent assassination attempt Sunday at his Florida golf club.
“I checked on him to see if he was OK,” she said, “and I told him what I have said publicly: There is no place for political violence in our country.”