Trump questions if Harris really black

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that his Democratic rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, had decided to "turn black" for political gain during a combative interaction with African American journalists in Chicago.

The inflammatory comments marked an escalation of Trump's vitriol against Harris, whom he falsely accused of having identified as Indian but then, "all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a black person".

Harris, 59, has long identified as black and graduated from a historically black university.

"So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?" asked Trump during a heated interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference.

Harris later denounced the attacks as "the same old show" of "the divisiveness and the disrespect "from Trump.

The combative remarks by the 78-year-old, who has been eager to improve his performance with black voters, are likely to send shock waves through the 2024 White House contest.

They came as the former president, convicted two months ago of felony fraud related to hush money payments to an adult movie star, struggles to formulate a new strategy less than 100 days before the election.

Later on Wednesday, he held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, a battleground state where he narrowly survived an assassination attempt last month and continued the verbal assault on his rival.

"Everything about Kamala Harris' rollout, it's phony," he said.

Harris slammed Trump's attacks in her address to a gathering on Wednesday in Houston, Texas.

"The American people deserve better," she said. "We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us, they are an essential source of our strength."

Trump's White House bid was thrown into chaos on July 21 when President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew his candidacy, backing Harris as the Democratic nominee.

Since then, Harris has seen her favorability ratings jump and raked in more than $200 million in campaign donations.

Trump, who had placed Biden's health at the heart of the election, now finds himself up against someone nearly two decades his junior, a trailblazer who became the country's first black, female and South Asian-origin vice-president.

Trump suggested in a Fox News interview this week that Harris would be considered weak and "like a play toy" by other world leaders, saying, "They're going to walk all over her."

Meanwhile, more than 100 venture capitalists, including entrepreneur Mark Cuban and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, threw their support behind Harris on Wednesday, in a counterweight to tech billionaires backing Trump.

"We spend our days looking for, investing in, and supporting entrepreneurs who are building the future," the group said in an online petition. "We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship and pro-technological progress."

Agencies Via Xinhua