“Donald Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists. And it was the same old show. The divisiveness, and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better.”
— Vice President Kamala Harris, presumptive Democratic nominee for POTUS
By now everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, must have heard or read about what Donald Trump said during his spectacularly disastrous interview with the National Association of Black Journalists. I would show you clips of his self immolation, but most of my friends can’t bear to watch him or hear him spew, so I’ll spare you the pain.
In essence, he attacked and insulted the black women journalists on the panel. “Nasty” and “rude” and “fake” and you get the idea, right? He loves to denigrate women in general but saves his most juvenile, cutting contempt and hostility for female journalists of color. The disrespect was breathtaking but not surprising.
And then he said this:
“So I’ve known her a long time – indirectly, not directly very much – and she was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Trump tells a roomful of black journalists that Kamala Harris isn’t black.
Of course, it blew up. How dare he? Everyone was hyperventilating, playing the clips, talking heads talked and talked and talked. And Trump got back what every narcissist craves most– attention.
Harris had to acknowledge it, and she did. BUT– she did it with class and a refusal to be drawn into the muck.
“It was the same old show,” she told her audience. “And let me just say the American people deserve better.”
Watch her, and really hear her:
See what she did there? Instead of outrage, she put herself in OUR place. She knows we’re tired of the same old crap. She talked about what WE need. What WE want. What WE– all of us– deserve in a leader. She’s facing forward and she wants us marching in the same direction, steamrolling right over the mud and the shittiness and the ugly.
Together, we’re moving forward to restore sanity and decency..
And. We. Are. Not. Going. Back.