ABC News host George Stephanopoulos called out Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a surrogate for Donald Trump, after he repeatedly slurred the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris.
During a Sunday interview on ABC’s This Week, Stephanopoulos asked Donalds about Trump’s attack on Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference last week.
“Is former President Trump questioning the Vice President’s racial identity?” Stephanopoulos wondered.
Donalds said the attack was a “phony controversy.”
“But if we’re going to be accurate, when Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the first Indian American United States Senator,” the Republican lawmaker opined. “Now she’s running nationally. Obviously, the campaign has shifted. You’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity.”
“And you just repeated the slur again,” Stephanopoulos noted. “She’s always identified as a Black woman. She is biracial. She has a Jamaican father, an Indian mother.”
“She’s always identified as both,” the ABC News host added. “Why are you questioning that?”
Donalds said that he was addressing the issue because “this is something that’s actually a conversation throughout social media right now.”
“There are a lot of people who are trying to figure this out,” he insisted.
“Sir, one second,” the ABC News host interrupted. “You just did it. You just did it again. Kamala Harris is vice president of the United States. Why do you — why do you insist on questioning her racial identity?”
Donalds accused Stephanopoulos of “yelling” at him.
“George, I’m gonna tell you again, he brought it up, AP is the one that wrote the headline when she first came into the United States Senate,” the Republican lawmaker stated. “Didn’t talk about her being Black, talked about her being the first Indian American senator.”
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“If it doesn’t matter, I don’t understand why you keep on repeating it, why the president keeps on repeating it, why those introducing the president yesterday keep on repeating it,” Stephanopoulos observed.
“George, you’re the one that’s bringing it up now,” Donalds fired back.
“Sir, you’ve done it three times,” Stephanopoulos said. “Every single answer you gave me, now let me finish, sir. Every single answer you gave, you repeated the slur.”
“And every single time you repeat the slur, that is exactly my point,” he added. “You simply can’t say that it’s wrong.”
