The Media Is Carrying Trump's Racism Water

In what journalist called competition for "the worst headline of the year," Politico claimed VP Kamala Harris "evades questions about her identity."

The Daily is a reader-supported independent newsletter committed to democracy, freedom, and accountability. Please consider becoming a subscriber to join our community and support our work.

It didn’t take ex-president and convicted felon Donald Trump very long to go full racist once VP Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumed presidential nominee after President Joe Biden declined to pursue his party’s nomination for presidential candidate.

But what can we expect from the OG Birther? Indeed, that is the point, because the media should know better by now.

On July 31, while being interviewed by three journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists during their convention, Trump falsely suggested the Vice President had misled voters about her race.

This wasn’t an accident. Trump was trying to divide Black viewers of the interview into seeing Harris as not one of them. He was holding up himself as a white man, who inherited wealth made from dishonest means, as the arbiter of who gets to call themselves Black.

“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?” Trump said, inserting his racism under the guise of ‘just asking questions.’

It’s very difficult for Trump to imagine that someone can be both Indian and Black, apparently. But also, his attack skips over the part where Kamala Harris as a Senator was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, attended Howard University and pledged the Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. But no one told Trump these things that are easily Googleable! Or Politico, apparently.

Enter Politico, stage Right:

Highly respected journalists like James Fallows, former national correspondent for The Atlantic, were part of a huge online backlash, writing of the headline, “Competition is stiff. But will be hard to top this as worst headline of the year.”

After hours of this, Politico caved into less extreme racism with this:

Harris is not evading her “identity”; she is refusing to help the media carry water for Donald Trump’s racist attacks on her. It is not Harris’ job to explain why Trump’s attack is racist to the media.

Again, these folks aren’t grilling Donald Trump about his “identity,” about which he has lied, misinformed, and EVADED.

But Politico is doing what Foreign Policy warned they’d be doing after being bought by a far-Right activist. “The Scandalous History of America’s Newest Media Baron: The new owner of Politico, Axel Springer, has a decades-long record of bending journalistic ethics for right-wing causes.”

Birtherism

Throughout the Birther years, I kept explaining on PoliticusUSA that the “division” resulting from racism is not the fault of the person being attacked with racism. One of the foaming-at-the-mouth racists even became president and thereby proved that division is a direct result of the racism dealt by a racist. Somehow, though, Trump managed to evade responsibility for the division he stoked in our communities and families. This, however, is apparently not of interest to our media.