(NewsNation) — Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance defended former President Donald Trump’s widely criticized comments about Vice President Kamala Harris’ race during an event Wednesday in Michigan.
Trump, during a Q&A session at National Association of Black Journalists convention last week, wrongly said Harris has only promoted her 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 said.
Vance, whose wife, Usha, is Indian, making his kids biracial, said he didn’t view Trump’s comments as an “attack” on Harris’ background.
“What I took it as was an attack on Kamala Harris being a chameleon,” Vance said, reiterating Trump’s false claims that the vice president “pretends to be one thing when she’s in front of one audience,” but “pretends to be something else” when speaking to others.
In reality, Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, has frequently talked about both parts of her heritage. She touched on growing up in a multicultural home in her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.”
FactCheck.org writes there is “ample evidence” that Harris has identified as both Indian American and Black for decades.
“My Indian heritage is just as strong as my African American heritage. One does not exclude the other,” Harris told a local newspaper chain in 2003, the year she was elected San Francisco district attorney.
However, Vance still used Trump’s mention of Harris’ heritage to accuse her of being “fake.”
“Donald Trump said something very simple, totally inoffensive, but frankly, obviously true to me,” Vance said.
Michael Tyler, communications director for Harris’ campaign, fired back at Trump after he spoke at the NABJ convention, saying his “tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also weighed in.
“It’s insulting, and no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify,” Jean-Pierre said.
Vance spoke at another stop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on Wednesday afternoon.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
