Senate Majority Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said Wednesday that former President Trump should focus on policy issues rather than competing in the race with Vice President Harris.
“The campaign needs to be and it has to be focused on the issues. And there’s a lot to debate. I think that’s where the focus needs to be. That’s how we win the election in November,” Thune told reporters.
Thune, who is running for Republican Senate Majority Leader to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was responding to the former president’s claim that he didn’t know if Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, was Indian or black. Trump made the remarks during a provocative interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago.
“I’ve known her indirectly for a long time. I don’t know her very well in person,” Trump said. “She’s always been Indian. And she’s always just promoted her Indian ancestry. I only found out she was black a few years ago when she happened to be black. And now she wants to be known as black.”
“So I don’t know if she’s Indian or black,” he said.
Trump’s comments came as Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), warned their colleagues to stop using the politics of diversity, equity and inclusion to attack Harris.
The comments drew swift condemnation from Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Black Democratic senator from Georgia.
“Let me tell you what it’s not. It shouldn’t be a surprise. This is who Donald Trump is. This is the politics of insults, revenge, resentment and retribution, and I suspect we’ll be hearing these words all the way through to November,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I think the American people are going to reject that. They know what Kamala Harris represents,” Warnock said.
“Here’s a woman, the daughter of a Jamaican man and an East Asian immigrant mother. She went to Howard University and is married to a Jewish man,” he said. “She embodies with her life the American covenant, ‘E Pluribus Unum.’ Donald Trump doesn’t understand that.”
