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By Kaitlin Lewis
Night Reporter
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Former President Donald Trump's comments challenging Vice President Kamala Harris' race will "almost certainly backfire" on the former president's reelection bid come November, a political analyst told Newsweek.
Trump's appearance at the National Association for Black Journalists (NABJ) convention on Wednesday has garnered immense attention after the former president claimed that Harris—the first female, Black and Asian American vice president—"happened to turn Black" in recent years.
"She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage," Trump said while answering a question about some conservatives calling Harris a "DEI hire." "I didn't know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black."
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Some supporters of the former president have since defended Trump's attacks, and the former president double-downed on his comments in a post to Truth Social on Thursday. Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, told CNN that the former president's statements were "totally reasonable," saying, "Look, all he said is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon." Conservative media personality Candace Owens defended Trump's statements as "objectively funny."
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According to Michael Tesler, political science professor at the University of California Irvine, Trump's focus on Harris' race is likely an attempt to "appeal to the large share of African American voters who hadn't seen Harris as sufficiently supportive of Black interests during the first three years of her vice presidency."
"But the way he went about doing it was so inept that it will almost certainly backfire with all audiences," Tesler told Newsweek via email.
"Trump's racist attacks on Harris will likely rally [Black voters] to her," he added. "And most white Americans do not want to be seen as racist, so trafficking in explicitly racist appeals is not an effective strategy."
Tesler pointed to an article he co-authored on July 9, which cited polling data by the Associated Press that found registered Black voters rated President Joe Biden six points more positively than Harris during the 2022 midterm elections.
As the 2024 election cycle has progressed, that gap in Black support has seemingly closed. A YouGov/Economist poll released July 29 found that Harris had a 7-point lead in favorability rating among Black Americans than Biden (77.3 percent to 70.3 percent).
But polling earlier in the year had shown Trump making gains among Black voters, meaning that his campaign's focus on Harris' race this week could risk the momentum.
"Trump and the party have made gains with Black and Latino voters," said Lee Hannah, political science professor at Wright State University. "We saw that in the 2020 election results and we've seen it in some polls. He is certainly risking softening that support and mobilizing new voters who take offense to a racially-charged campaign."
Hannah noted that, with less than 100 days until the election, there has been a clear difference between Harris and Trump's campaign messages. While he believes Harris "has been remarkably disciplined and on message" during her first two weeks in the 2024 race, Trump "hasn't been able to find a clear and focused attack on Harris that is resonating."
"He still has time for that, but if the election doesn't go his way, I think a lot of people are going to look back at these past two weeks as a missed opportunity," Hannah told Newsweek.
Several prominent Republicans have attempted to steer away from Trump's comments about Harris' racial heritage and instead encouraged their party to focus on Harris' policies under Biden's administration. North Carolina Thom Tillis said in a post to X, formerly Twitter, that the GOP was not "gaining ground" by commenting on "anything but this Biden administration's failed economy, failed border, failed national security."
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also bashed Trump's comments while speaking to Punchbowl News on Thursday, saying, ""What have we been talking about all week long? ... Maybe they don't know how to handle the campaign, so they default to issues that simply should not be an issue."
Hannah told Newsweek that Harris' team likely "anticipated having to defend the Biden Administration's record" when the vice president first launched her campaign, but that "Trump's lack of focus has instead given her space to criticize Trump and make her case for president."
"Trump's team wants him to go after her record and positions, but instead they are spending time in cleaning up his comments from NABJ and answering questions about his running mate's quotes," Hannah added, referring to Vance's controversial past statements about women and reproductive rights.
Tesler also described Harris' team as running an "inclusive campaign that seeks to expand the Democratic coalition," while Trump is mainly firing up his MAGA base.
"This is, perhaps, most evident in their [vice president] selections," he added.
Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics, held a similar opinion when talking to Newsweek over the phone Thursday about Trump's NABJ appearance, saying that Trump's campaign has "been about the base. It's not been about expanding."
"I think they're going to have to figure out a different way," she added.
"It may be that their ... strategy is, we just need to get the folks that support Donald Trump to turn out in huge numbers," Walsh said. "In which case they're just going to keep throwing red meat, which I think was what we saw [Wednesday]."
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