I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised. People might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him. Met him face to face. That's going to change soon. But what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. [00:00:15] He suggested that you happened to turn black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity. Yeah. - And he. - Same old tired playbook. Next question please. Yeah. [00:00:31] That's it. That's it. That was from Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris's first formal interview since Biden dropped out. And she became the nominee, not dignifying it in any way by stooping to his level, which I do not think I could have done. [00:00:48] I'm curious your guys thoughts in a moment, but Trump, right after the interview, simply posted on Truthsocial the following bit of very high level insight and and just a dissection of what was going on in the in [00:01:03] the interview by posting this boring. So, you know, really bringing it there. More in a minute about the the clip that caused this, but I would love to get your guys thoughts. That Trump tweet reminds me of what he did during Kamala Harris's [00:01:22] acceptance speech at the DNC. He wrote. Yeah, but Tim Walz turns out to be not a coach, but an assistant coach. And I'm like, that's what you wanted to post as a response to her speech at the convention? [00:01:37] Fascinating. Okay. But what I want to hear what you think of that response first. Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. You power our honest reporting. [00:01:52] You do it at t.com/team and we love you for it. I think it's brilliant in terms of strategy and how to play this. I recently read, Nate Silver's Substack, his newsletter, where he talked about [00:02:07] Kamala is rejecting the failed strategy of Hillary Clinton in 2016. If you guys remember, like every other word and utterance was, we're shattering the glass ceiling and I'm the first woman and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all of that identity politics kind of stuff, which I [00:02:25] think is part of the calculation there. But really, I think what she's doing is the Obama playbook. If people will remember, yes, he is the first black president of the United States of America. But when he ran in oh eight, he never explicitly talked about this. [00:02:43] He would do these feints right where he's like singing amazing Grace and he's, you know, sort of cadence or he would borrow from, you know, historical black church and that preacher type of cadence, depending on his audience, he would like play certain music at his rallies but he never [00:02:59] really sort of cloaked himself in this. I'm the first black president because he didn't have to. Like, you don't have to remind people that you're a black woman when you look like Kamala Harris. And your name is Kamala. Like, it's obvious what she's doing. [00:03:16] She's just she's just not playing into this identity politics thing. The truth of her identity is manifest. She doesn't need to conk people over the head with it. And so when Donald Trump does the race baiting, she doesn't take it [00:03:31] because she doesn't have to. That's the thing about being black, right? Like, as opposed to being, like, Italian or Greek, like, people might be like, yeah, he's white, but like, which one is he? Like when you're black? People tend to know that you're black. People tend to notice. Yeah. [00:03:49] Look, Ben, to answer your question, I'm with was I. You know, I've been saying all along since Kamala Harris entered the race, first side to play identity politics loses and so and the Republicans and Trump and Vance have done nothing but identity politics. Oh, she slept her way to the top. Oh, she's not even black. [00:04:07] And it's just constant attacks on her gender, her race, etc. I think by not addressing it and not playing identity politics, Kamala Harris is definitely making the right decision. So that way she's not asking people to go out of their comfort zone. [00:04:22] Well, you could agree or disagree on whether they should be in a comfort zone, whether that's a morally correct or not. But as a matter of political strategy, she's saying, hey, I'm good. I'm just like one of you guys, right? Whereas Trump is screaming, no, I don't like women, I don't like minorities. And that's a definitely a losing strategy. [00:04:39] I hear that for sure. And I do think it was very smart to make herself more presidential and above the fray in a moment like that. I, I would have gone so much deeper into a response being like, and how dare he say that? And I've been identifying this my whole life and I would have gone much more. [00:04:56] So it's noble that she didn't. But I wonder your your guys thoughts. Should she have just like, added another word in there to frame it more aggressively instead of saying same old tired playbook? What if she said same old tired, racist playbook? Next question. Or same old tired, race baiting question? [00:05:14] Next question. Yeah, I wouldn't have done it because the minute you say racist, it triggers. - What about race. - Baiting? What about saying race baiting? It's clearly what it is. Even then, you know, look, here's a super sad fact in my opinion, which is that it's a funny sentence already. [00:05:29] Okay? Which is that when you say, hey, we should end racism or there is racism, it triggers a certain number of people. Now, it doesn't trigger me because I don't think like, oh, that's a statement about me because it's not I'm not racist, I'm against racism. [00:05:48] So I never take it personally. But a lot of Americans do. And and that's an uncomfortable fact. But they do. So I don't want to trigger those people. I want Trump to trigger our side into voting against him. [00:06:05] Right. And I want Trump to trigger independents into going. I don't like that guy. He's not one of us. Right. Whereas when you start getting into saying like he's unfair to me, I'm offended he's doing racism or it's race baiting, it, it it makes some portion [00:06:23] of people feel like you're not them. I wish that wasn't the case, but I think it is. - Was what do you think? - Yeah. I think if you're playing politics, there's a way that you can handle this question. If you're Kamala in her position, that kind of indicts the audience [00:06:39] and there's just no reason to do that. Like trying to score some level of racial morality points in an interview doesn't work if like, again, if this were like 1920 something before color TV and all we had was the radio [00:06:58] or whatever it was, and she's giving this interview on the radio. I might maybe be saying something different, but it's on TV. People can look at Kamala Harris and the person questioning her race just seems silly. [00:07:14] Like there's no reason for her to engage it in some serious manner and some scolding sort of manner when you don't have to. Like, I think the mistake that Democrats have made in the past is a contempt for the audience and contempt for a certain amount [00:07:33] of the American electorate who isn't, you know, didn't go to college, didn't take these racial sensitivity ideas. They haven't ingested them fully. And so therefore they're not as, let's face it, good as college people are [00:07:50] at toeing the race line, right? But I think most Americans say, understand that Kamala Harris is black and anybody who questions that is being ridiculous. And I give Kamala the credit for not having to spoon feed [00:08:08] the American public the truth here. - Like it's not that deep. - Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think maybe then another thing that she could consider going forward is like setting more traps for him, because it would be interesting [00:08:23] if she instead said, like, I don't know what he's talking about, but I do know that only recently did Donald Trump start identifying as white and just make him then go on TV and say, I've always been proud of how white I am. I'm very white and smart. [00:08:39] - That might be a better way to do it. - Yeah. Or like I heard, he's pretending he's German or something like that, or pretending he's not German. So because that actually did happen. His family pretended not to be German. And so then Trump would come out and go, I am German. [00:08:56] I'm proud to be German. Right? I'm like, okay, brother, take it easy. And and of course, in case you don't remember the initial clip that sparked this. Harris was responding to Trump's race baiting and just plain insane comments that Harris only recently became black, [00:09:13] which, of course, he said while speaking with the National Association of Black Journalists. Take a look at this pearl of wisdom straight from the pigs mouth, surrounded by lots of extra vitriol towards his black interviewer. ABC's Rachel Scott and more casual racism thrown in all around it. [00:09:29] Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a black woman? Well, I can say no. I think it's maybe a little bit different. So I've known her a long time. Indirectly, not directly, very much. And she was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. [00:09:48] 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? She is always identified as a black woman. - I respect. - Either one. I respect either one. But she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the way. [00:10:05] And then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went. - She became a black person. - Just to be clear. - Sir, do you believe. - That somebody should look into that too? When you ask a continuant a very hostile, nasty tone. - It's a direct. - Question. Sir, do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is a Di hire, [00:10:22] as some Republicans don't know? I mean, I really don't know. Could be. I mean, just in every way. The guy can't be nice, can't play by any sort of actual policy based politics, can't ever brush aside an opportunity for identity politics. [00:10:37] It's his bread and butter and his famous someone should look into. That is just the great way to get people questioning things that are obvious facts before your very eyes. Yeah. Kamala Harris is definitely right. Let him punch himself into oblivion, right? [00:10:53] I mean, you can't do better than that as a Kamala Harris ad, because if you can't tell that Kamala Harris is black, you probably shouldn't be president. It's it's really that simple. And I think Trump is showing some slippage in his game in that clip. [00:11:11] Because if you're if you really paying attention, what he's trying to do there is attach Kamala to this idea that I think has some credence that she's a flip flopper. She's Medicare for all and she's not. She she wants to ban fracking, not fracking. [00:11:27] Excuse me. Now she's all for it. You know, she's she's vacillating between her positions on these issues all the time. And if he were a more savvy candidate, he could try to effectively paint that picture of Kamala being this and being that. [00:11:45] And it's true. Like there's been times in her past where she emphasized her Indian heritage and other times where she emphasized her black, her her black American heritage, right. Or Jamaican American heritage. Right? Like a savvier person in Trump's position could effectively communicate that, [00:12:06] but he just doesn't have it. And so what we get instead is just his sloppy way of saying, you never know who Kamala is or where she stands or what she believes, and instead he's saying that she's going black all the way now, [00:12:22] like he's he's slipping, y'all. Yeah, but. To be fair, once you go black, you can't go back. Thanks for watching The Young Turks. Really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. [00:12:38] You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. 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