Booker: Trump’s NABJ remarks an effort to ‘deflect and divide’

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said former President Trump’s comments on Wednesday questioning Vice President Harris’s heritage as a Black woman represent an effort to “deflect” from key issues in the election and “divide” the country.

“This is a standard playbook for Donald Trump to try to deflect and divide,” Booker said in an interview on MSNBC’s “11th Hour” on Wednesday.

“He brings up things that he knows will be considered outrageous by people on our side of the aisle, and all we want to do now is talk about that,” Booker continued. “And this is really his ability to deflect from what the real issues of this election are and try to divide our country against itself and opportunistically capitalize on that.”

Booker pointed to Trump’s past inflammatory remarks, from falsely claiming former President Obama was not born in the U.S. to calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five.

“This is what he does,” Booker said. “As opposed to bringing our country together for common aspiration and common purpose and, really, the sense of common cause, he divides us against each other, using racial tropes as his tool. I've seen this in the Republican Party too much.”

Booker called on Democrats and Harris supporters to ignore Trump’s comments and refocus their attention on positive messages that matter to voters.

“Think about this for a second: We are talking about whether a Black woman is Black, and all these people are rushing to say, Oh, ‘She's in AKA, and she went to a historically Black college.’ Enough of that. Let's talk about the economy. Let's talk about health care. Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about that,” Booker said.

Booker’s interview comes after Trump took part in a heated question-and-answer event on Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists’ (NABJ) annual convention in Chicago.

Trump’s combative interview drew some negative and animated responses from the crowd, including when he questioned Harris’s heritage. Harris is Indian American and Black American. Her mother emigrated from India, and her father emigrated from Jamaica.

“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,” Trump said of Harris. “So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?” 

“But you know what, I respect either one,” Trump said. “But she obviously doesn’t. Because she was Indian all the way then, all of a sudden, she made a turn. And she became a Black person. And I think somebody should look into that.”

Harris responded to Trump’s comments on Wednesday night, saying at a convention of a prominent Black sorority in Houston that “the American people deserve better.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength,” she said.