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Vice President Kamala Harris responded to remarks made by former President Donald Trump at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on Wednesday.
Trump claimed that Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, had recently “happened to turn Black.” He also had several tense exchanges with the journalists interviewing him, including when asked about past comments he’d made related to race and police-involved shootings.
Harris addressed his comments later on Wednesday when speaking at the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority convention in Houston, Texas.
“It was the same old show,” Harris said of Trump’s remarks at the NABJ event. “The divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better. 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.”
The Harris campaign and the vice president’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement: “Big talk from a coward like Kamala Harris who was too chicken shit to even show up at the event.”
A source familiar with Harris’s schedule told the Associated Press she did not attend the NABJ convention because it did not work with her schedule. The source, who the AP did not name, also said Harris offered to appear virtually, but the NABJ declined.