'America deserves better,' says Harris after Trump comments on her racial identity

Aug. 1 (UPI) -- Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday evening that "America deserves better" after former President Donald Trump attacked her racial identity earlier in the day.

Trump, the Republican nominee for president, on Wednesday had a combative interview with a panel during the National Association of Black Journalists 2024 Convention at the Hilton in Chicago, during which he wrongly claimed that Harris had long identified as Indian "but then all of a sudden she made a turn and became a Black person."

"I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?" the former president asked. "I respect either one but she obviously doesn't."

Harris, who is biracial, did not directly mention Trump's comments during her speech Wednesday evening to members of the Sigma Gamma Rho Black sorority at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, but pointed to Trump's interview as an example of the divisiveness of the previous administration.

"It's the same old show," said Harris, whose father is Jamaican and mother is Indian. She also famously attended Howard University, a historically Black college. "The American people deserve better."

Her rally speech framed Trump as a candidate who would take the United States backward while she was "fighting for the future," indicating a potential strategy her nascent campaign may ride on.

"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," she said.

"We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength."