Trump has no idea how to handle Kamala – and now his opponents are laughing at him

Part of Donald Trump’s strategy for November is to win over Black voters, which is why he was recently a guest at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. I will leave it to you to judge how well he did.

Of Kamala Harris he said: «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.” He claimed – without foundation – that originally Harris would only speak of her south Asian roots (she has an Indian mother and a Jamaican father) – but that now she wanted to be known as Black. The audience seesawed between laughter and derision; groans and gasps.

He picked a fight with one of the hosts, the respected ABC television reporter Rachel Scott, accusing her of being mean and nasty after she had quoted back to Trump some of what he had said before about people of colour.

And then during the course of his remarks, he spoke about the problems of illegal immigration – because those who were “streaming across the border” were taking “Black jobs”.

Hang on. What’s a “Black” job as opposed to a white one? Did he mean that those coming from central America were taking the jobs of Black journalists in the room who’d gathered for their convention? No. Of course not. When he speaks about “Black jobs” he means unskilled, manual labour. That hasn’t stopped Black people from reclaiming the phrase, though – in response to somebody telling her that her Black job was “being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics” on Twitter/X, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles replied “I love my Black job”, accompanied by a black heart emoji.

But of course, Trump has been here before. He was the leading proponent of the “birther” conspiracy