On a stage in which he received a battery of questions from three journalists -in which at times one intervention was interjected upon another- Trump said his rival for the 2024 elections, Vice President Kamala Harris, “turned black”, that “she suddenly took a turn” in her identity.

Trump’s comments, at the meeting based in Chicago, came after one of the interviewers asked him why black voters should consider supporting a candidate with his history of racist attacks on political rivals.

The former president’s response was with a question about Harris’s ancestry. “She was always of Indian descent and she was only promoting Indian ancestry. I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?” he said. “I think someone should look into that as well,” said Trump, whose opinions here recall similar attacks on political rivals in particular when he tried to promote the false and racist conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama because, according to him, he was not born in the United States.

Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father; she was born in Oakland, California, and received her higher education at Howard University, a historically African-American college.

Some observers have warned that Trump’s stance on women and race issues could end up affecting his election campaign this year.

In an interview that Trump gave to Fox News, part of which was broadcast yesterday, the former president tried to downplay Harris when he said that world leaders would treat her “like a toy” if she is elected president.

With a long history of making disparaging remarks about female opponents, he said: “It will be so easy for them. It will be like a toy.”

“They look at her and say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re going to walk all over her,” he stressed and looking directly into the camera, Trump added: “I don’t want to say why, but a lot of people get it.”

The former president has repeatedly attacked women who have criticized him by mocking their appearance and insulting their character, NBC News recalled.

During the 2016 Republican presidential cycle, he called Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, a “nasty woman”; he referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy,” adult film actress Stormy Daniels as “horseface” and his rival in the 2024 primaries, Nikki Haley, as “a knucklehead.”

Trump has already referred to the vice president as “crazy Kamala” and has labeled her “dumb as a rock.”

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