Trump at the NABJ Convention: Cringe or Clever?

The Trump campaign must enforce message discipline. Eyes on the prize. Harris is a DEI hire because she’s incompetent. When he sloppily attacks Harris, he gives the media an opening.

Trump made an appearance yesterday at the National Association of Black Journalists and it went about how you expected. ABC News’ Rachel Scott started the Q&A on a very aggressive note, hounding the President over GOP accusations that Kamala Harris is a DEI candidate and heavily implaying Trump was a racist. Trump responded by calling her rude, saying the Q&A had started half an hour late, and giving the media the money quote “I didn’t know she was black.” 

Before diving deeper, it’s worth saying I don’t think Trump transmitted his message very well, but I do think he was correct in what he meant. Trump wasn’t saying Harris made up her race, as some outlets are reporting. What he alluded to was that prior to the 2020 election, Harris strongly played up her Indian heritage and put the black heritage on the backburner. 

Case in point, reporter Lee Fang noted in his Substack that Harris heavily evoked her Indian background in her initial forays into public life. Fang wrote, “She introduced herself to the local press as ‘Kamala Devi Harris,’ using her full name. ‘In terms of Indian culture, my name represents the beautiful lotus flower,’ she said at one of her first campaign events. ‘I grew up with a strong Indian culture,’ she told Asian Week in 2003.”

But then, when running for the presidency in 2020, she shifted to highlighting her black heritage instead. Fang reveals that an archive of her campaign website shows no reference to her Indian past.  

But was Trump right to pursue this line of attack? Yes and no. 

He’s not wrong to focus on Harris’ race as the only redeeming feature for Biden. I would argue that the best way to use the DEI weapon against Harris is to argue that she was picked to serve beside Biden because of her skin tone, and that her performance both in the 2020 primary and as VP show she is imminently unqualified to do the job. 

Indeed, a recent poll conducted by Breaking Points / J.L. Partners revealed that the top word associated with Harris amongst all voters was “incompetent,” followed closely by “liberal,” “terrible,” and “fake.”

Democrats overwhelmingly say she’s strong, but both Republicans and Independents view her as incompetent. 

With that in mind, Trump would be far better served by hammering Harris on voter’s perception of her incompetency. She’s a weak candidate, glued to a historically unpopular administration. But by obsessing over whether Harris emphasized her Indianness or her blackness at any given point in her career, Trump risks missing the forest for the trees. 

The second point that I think many media outlets are missing here is the target of Trump’s appearance at the NABJ. Many seem to think that he beclowned himself with black women and black journalists. He may very well have. 

It doesn’t matter since both black women and journalists vote almost exclusively for Democrats anyway. Per the progressive Higher Heights for America PAC, “94% of Black women voters supported Hilary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election. 96% of Black women voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. 90% of Black women voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020.”

A 2022 survey out of Syracuse University showed “slightly more than 36% of U.S. journalists say they identify with the Democrat Party, up about eight percentage points from 2013. The number of those who identified with the Republican party decreased about six percentage points to 3.4% during the same period.”

These are not demographics Trump should exert an iota of effort trying to win over. They’re in the tank for Harris. Where he might make some ground is with black men. 

Trump has steadily been gaining ground with black men as various media outlets have reported. By making himself more available and present at events where black men are present and active, he might be able to sap more of the formerly reliable Democratic voting bloc. And as politicos know, it’s more valuable to flip a voter than to activate an old one. 

The President should continue his chevauchées into enemy territory. There is clearly the potential to peel off certain subsects of the Democratic coalition to his side. But when he attacks Harris at these events in a muddled manner, it has the potential to hand fodder to the opposition.

The Trump campaign must enforce message discipline. Eyes on the prize. Harris is a DEI hire because she’s incompetent. Her race was the reason she was picked, Biden said so himself. But that doesn’t mean Trump miring himself in race based grievance politics. 

Be precise. Be clear. Don’t let Harris redefine race. Er, the race.