Blasts Trump on race claim, says values on border same

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a new CNN interview on Thursday that Donald Trump’s bizarre claim that the vice president only had recently begun identifying as Black is the “same old tired playbook” that the Republican nominee has used before.

Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention last month, Trump claimed Harris “was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” until she wasn’t.

“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,” the former president continued.

CNN anchor Dana Bash on Thursday asked Harris about that comment.

“He suggested that you happened to turn black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity,” Bash said.

Harris replied, “Yes … Same old tired playbook. Next question, please.”

Bash asked, “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Harris said.

Harris also said in the same interview that she plans to select a Republican to serve in her Cabinet if she defeats Trump in the November election,.

“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion,” Harris said.

“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” Harris said. “And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”

Harris, in her first sit-down interview since replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket more than a month earlier, also defended the apparent policy shifts to the center she has made since her 2019 run for president.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is, my values have not changed,” Harris told Bash, singling out her values on border security and climate change.

The remarks came in the first clips to air of the joint interview with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Harris and Walz have come under fire from their Republican rivals, Trump and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, over their lack of exposure to the press.

The interview took place at Kim’s Cafe in Savannah, Georgia, earlier Thursday. It is set to air at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.

Bash in the clip had asked Harris, “How should voters look at some of the changes that you’ve made, that you’ve explained some of here, in your policy?”

The vice president picked two hot-button issues to illustrate her point.

“You mentioned the Green New Deal,” Harris said. “I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

“We did that with the inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America, and by extension, the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

“As an example, that value has not changed.”

Harris went on, “My value around what we need to do to secure our border — that value has not changed.”

“I spent two terms as the attorney general of California, prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws, regarding the passage — illegal passage — of guns, drugs and human beings across our border,” she said. “My values have not changed.”

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.