PHOENIX — Sen. JD Vance told reporters it’s “hysterical how much the media is overreacting” to his running mate Donald Trump’s comments questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is Black.
Harris, the GOP vice presidential nominee said, has a “fundamental chameleon-like nature.”
“The president doesn’t do scripted BS stuff,” Vance told a group of reporters aboard his plane during his campaign swing Wednesday night. “He actually goes into hostile audiences, he answers tough questions, he pushes back against them, but he actually answers them, and how nice it is to have an American leader who’s not afraid to go into hostile places and actually answer some tough questions.”
Trump questioned Harris’ racial identity during a panel interview at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference in Chicago on Wednesday.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said of Harris, who attended an HBCU and identifies as both Indian and Black. “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.”
“I respect either one,” Trump added, “but she obviously doesn’t.”
Both Harris’ campaign and the White House quickly condemned Trump’s remarks, with second gentleman Doug Emhoff saying it showed “a worse version of an already horrible person.”
Vance told reporters it was overblown and suggested Harris is being slippery.
“So what he said, I thought it was hysterical,” Vance said. “I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris. And you guys saw yesterday, she was in Georgia, and she put on a southern accent for a Georgia audience. She grew up in Vancouver. What the hell is going on here? She is not who she pretends to be.”
When asked by a reporter explicitly if he questions whether Harris is Black, Vance said, “What I question is why she presents a different posture depending on which audience that she’s in front of.”
Harris, a Howard University graduate, has long embraced both of her parents’ racial heritage, and that multicultural identity has been featured across her political campaigns.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.