Vice President Kamala Harris slammed former President Donald Trump on Monday night in a tense “60 Minutes” interview, calling him a “racist” and accusing him of alienating “millions” of American voters. Condemned.
CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker accused Harris of portraying Trump as a “racist and divisive.”
“You accused Donald Trump of using racist metaphors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, birtherism, and Charlottesville. In fact, you called him a racial I called him racist and divisive,” Whitaker said.
“But Donald Trump has the support of millions of Americans. How do you explain that?
“I'm glad you called out these comments he made, which led to the reaction of most reasonable people to say, 'That's wrong.' That’s just not true,” Harris, 59, began.
But Whitaker said: “How do you bridge this seemingly unbridgeable gap when so many people support Donald Trump – the man you called a racist? ” he asked.
Instead of answering, Harris ducked.
“I believe the American people want leaders who will not seek to divide or degrade us,” she said. “I think the American people are realizing that the true measure of a leader's strength is not based on who he defeats, but who he lifts up.”
As recently as September 10, when Trump and Harris argued during a debate hosted by ABC News, the Democratic candidate misunderstood Trump's comments and said, “The person who wants to be president has consistently said… It's a tragedy that he has moved on with his life.” Throughout his career, he sought to use race to divide Americans. ”
“Let's remember Charlottesville, where a crowd of people with tiki torches spewed anti-Semitic hate. And what did the president at the time say?” There are great people on both sides. “I did,” she added.
President Trump's false claim that he called neo-Nazis “very fine people” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville has been fact-checked multiple times since the 2017 rally. The 45th president was referring to both protesters and counter-protesters in a disagreement over the decision to preserve a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
President Trump said at a subsequent press conference that neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be condemned in their entirety.”
In terms of support, Trump, 78, won 2,243 delegate votes and secured the 2024 Republican nomination. Although he lost the electoral vote in the 2020 election, he received about 74 million popular votes. He won the electoral college in 2016, but fell short of the popular vote in 2016 by nearly 63 million people.
In the run-up to Nov. 5, polls show her making historic gains for a Republican candidate among Hispanic, black male and Jewish voters, a coalition that has strengthened Harris' Narrowing the lead could give them much-needed wins in key battleground states.
On Tuesday, President Trump visited Ohel Chabad-Lubavitch, the final resting place of Rabbi Menachem Schneelson in Queens, to place a stone on his headstone and commemorate the one-year anniversary of Hamas' October 7 massacre in Israel. .
Critics pointed to other racist or racially insensitive comments he has made this year about illegal immigrants, whom he accused of “tainting the blood of our country” and “taking away black people's jobs.” I am doing it.
President Trump has also promoted the “birther” conspiracy about former President Barack Obama, falsely claiming that the 44th president was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii, and recently said that Harris was “until we met by chance a few years ago.” , I didn't know I was black.” I became black and now I want to be known as black. ”
During the debate, ABC hosts drew attention to the latter statement, which Harris mentioned while Trump acknowledged in 2016 without an apology that he was wrong.
Trump responded: “All I can say is she's not black and I read what she said.” “And I read that she's black, and I'm okay with that. I was okay with either. It's up to her.”
Harris' father, Donald Harris, was born in Jamaica, and her mother, Shyamala Harris, was born in India.
They both immigrated to the United States to pursue PhDs at the University of California, Berkeley, and met there in the 1960s.
