RawStory

2024 Elections

'Y’all got played': Joy Reid issues 3 reasons Trump attended NABJ in scathing fact-check

MSNBC's Joy Reid issued a blistering fact-check to Donald Trump following the ex-president's Q&A session with Black journalists in Chicago Wednesday.

During the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention in the Windy City, a hostile Trump claimed he was unaware that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is Black, and spewed baseless claims, such as that Harris is a "border czar."

Keep reading... Show less

First GOP lawmaker to call Harris a DEI hire complains about being labeled racist

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) complained that he has been accused of racism after referring to presumed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a "DEI vice president."

During a Thursday interview with Burchett on Real America's Voice, host Michelle Backus noted that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was asked this week if he would tell his party to stop referring to Harris as a "DEI hire."

Keep reading... Show less

'A divide on the right': GOP in disarray after Trump/Vance attacks on women and race

Donald Trump's decision to sit down for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists where he created a firestorm by questioning the racial background of Vice President Kamala Harris has created yet another headache for the Republican party.

Already reeling from the fallout of Trump running mate Sen. J.D. Vance's attacks on "childless cat ladies" and labeling couples without children as "sociopaths," GOP strategists are raising alarms that the top members of the 2024 ticket are doing irreparable damage to their already close election prospects.

In a report from Politico, Natalie Allison and Alex Isenstadt write that the controversial comments from the presidential and vice presidential nominees are creating "a divide on the right" already unnerved about how the election will turn out — particularly in light of Harris' surge in the polls.

Trump's truncated interview in Chicago where he was pulled off the stage by his staff after aggressively questioning whether Harris is Black, set off alarms late Wednesday, with Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist, lamenting, "They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris. He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”

ALSO READ: 'Time to get off the stage': Trump urged to step aside by long time acquaintance

According to the report, the Trump campaign had just started hammering Harris on the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis in hopes of drowning out questions over Vance's viability as a running mate and the millions spent on that campaign may have been wasted as attention shifted to Trump's outrageous accusations.

Noting "Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition," the Politico report added, "The former president has a long history of making incendiary remarks, and some party strategists suspect it is a reflection of his impulse to draw attention to himself when it is not on him — even when the resulting headlines are negative."

According to Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative podcast host, “Kamala Harris might deserve name calling, but doing so will only garner her sympathy.”

John Fredericks, a Trump-backing conservative radio host, also questioned what is going on with the ex-president's campaign, admitting, "...personal attacks against Kamala Harris are really ill-advised and ill-placed, and have no upside in this campaign.”

“When you’ve got all the issues, you’ve got everything working to your favor, why are you going to use personal attacks? They don’t work against Trump, and they’re not going to work against her,” Fredericks complained.

You can read more here.

'Lay off on the race stuff': Truth Social turns on Trump as he shares Harris' 'Indian' pic

Former President Donald Trump enraged followers on the social media company he owns Thursday when he doubled down on attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris' racial identity.

Trump echoed on Truth Social claims that have infuriated conservatives and liberals alike that Harris, who is Black, should not identify as such.

Keep reading... Show less

'Unacceptable and abhorrent': Republicans turn on Trump over Black journalists convention

Republicans are turning on former President Donald Trump over an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention one Fox News pundit dubbed an "absolute dumpster fire."

Conservatives are backing away from Trump over his hostile response to a hard-hitting question from ABC correspondent Rachel Scott, his claim that he was the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, and questioning of Vice President Kamala Harris' race.

Keep reading... Show less

Doug Emhoff blasts Trump and Vance for questioning Harris’ racial identity

Kamala Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, said former President Donald Trump’s questioning of the vice president’s racial identity is an insult meant to distract voters from his policy intentions.

“We’ve got to focus on what they’re really trying to do, which is to destroy our country,” Emhoff said during a campaign fundraiser in Maine Wednesday evening, pointing to the conservative transition plan Project 2025 and recent decisions from the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, such as overturning the right to abortion.

Keep reading... Show less

'Flailing' Trump tried to put a 'hit' on Harris — and he missed: NYT journalist

A clearly disgusted Jeremy Peters from the New York Times trashed Donald Trump's brain trust on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for sending him out to the National Association of Black Journalists' interview in Chicago on Thursday with no cogent plan of attack.

Reflecting on the way the abrasive Trump comported himself under questioning — which has led to criticism from Democrats and conservatives alike — Peters told the MSNBC panel that is it evident the Trump campaign is "flailing" as it looks for an angle to take on Harris who has experienced an explosive burst of support since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

As he explained, if Trump's inner circle thought attacking Harris over her race would be a winner with the public, they were sadly mistaken.

ALSO READ: Mike Johnson's now-deleted Trump social media post sparks controversy

Asked what the Trump campaign's strategy appears to be, Peters told the hosts, "I think they're flailing around. They have not landed on any effective critique of her. It's 'laughing Kamala, crazy Kamala, crooked Kamala.' Trump is kind of casting about for an attack line that works, something he's been very effective at doing with his other opponents, but they can't land on one. They don't know how to go after her."

"I think what Vice President Harris has done by responding the way she did is to very effectively draw the contrast that Biden couldn't with Trump," he continued. "She's saying, you know, 'same old show.' It's no accident she used the word old, right?"

"She's reminding people that this is something that we've all seen before from Donald Trump – it's kind of like a tired sequel to the original," he elaborated. "He is going back to the same playbook, saying, you know, questioning her background, that somehow this is, like, a conspiracy theory, that he'd like to be as powerful as birtherism was in 2016. I don't know about that."

"As far as conspiracy theories go, this is a pretty weak one," he pointed out. "I think it sounded like it was something very compulsive, that came out of his mouth at the time. I had never heard this before, maybe I'm wrong. I never actually heard anybody questioning Vice President Harris's background the way there were dark conspiracy theories around [ex-President Barack] Obama. I think this was just a, you know, an attempt to land a hit on her, and he missed."

Watch below or at the link.

MSNBC 08 01 2024 07 13 30 youtu.be

'Laughter of disbelief': Insider recalls 'vibe' at Trump's Black journalist interview

It's wasn't levity that spurred attendees of the National Association of Black Journalists convention to laugh at former President Donald Trump, one attendee says.

Huffington Post senior editor Philip Lewis Thursday detailed to MSNBC viewers the strange "vibe" he felt at the Chicago convention as Trump fielded questions in what Lewis called a campaign "train wreck."

Keep reading... Show less

'Trump loses his hostage': Biden applauded for release of Gershkovich and Whelan

The Biden administration has secured the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian prisons as part of a prisoner swap, which wipes away one of Donald Trump's baffling campaign promises.

The men had been jailed on espionage charges they both deny, and the U.S. State Department has designated them as wrongly detained, and the Kremlin may also release Russian-British dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was convicted of treason for criticizing the Ukraine invasion, as part of the swap.

Keep reading... Show less

'You fail': Washington Post slammed for 'terrible headline' about Trump journalist event

The Washington Post said after Donald Trump's interview at a Black journalist conference that it was Vice President Kamala Harris, and not the ex-president, who is facing a "pivotal moment," leading to widespread criticism from the paper's readers.

The outlet's headline after the event at which Trump accused Harris of faking being Black to appeal to voters was, "Harris faces a pivotal moment as Trump questions her identity."

Keep reading... Show less

Fed Chair accused of 'trying to get Donald Trump elected' by keeping rates high

Inflation has cooled dramatically since the U.S. Federal Reserve began hiking interest rates in 2022, but the central bank announced Wednesday that it would keep rates pegged at a two-decade high for the 12th consecutive month, intensifying concerns that the chair of the powerful body is acting on political rather than economic reasoning.

The Revolving Door Project (RDP), an anti-corruption watchdog group, accused Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell of "trying to get Donald Trump elected," noting that the former president and 2024 GOP nominee warned Powell against cutting interest rates before the November contest—a message Republican lawmakers have echoed.

Keep reading... Show less

'Time to get off the stage': Trump urged to step aside by long time acquaintance

Reflecting on Donald Trump's confrontational appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists' convention in Chicago, one long time acquaintance of the former president dating back to their days in New York City insisted it is time for Trump to leave the public stage.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the Rev. Al Sharpton — a host of his own show on MSNBC — went on a tirade about the former president and how he treated the female moderators and the audience and claimed Trump's act is getting way past old.

Sharpton was prompted to address Trump's controversial appearance by "Morning Joe" regular Mike Barnicle who stated, "We have known Donald Trump for a long time. You've known him longer than I have. What we saw yesterday is just another exhibit of a badly-damaged man on stage. I don't know about you, but watching him it occurred to me that the culture has passed him by. He is playing old school politics that has always worked for him; hate, envy, resentment, fear of the other. But the culture we live in today is so accelerated that you can measure it by a stopwatch."

ALSO READ: Bad news for Trump: Harris will bring the receipts on Dobbs abortion decision

"Well, first of all, what has been perplexing to me is that we've been asking the wrong question," Sharpton began. "A lot of people when it came out that the National Association of Black Journalists had invited him was saying, 'Why would you invite him?' The real question is, why did he accept? He accepted to go to do exactly what he did, he wanted to go and say,' 'I will stand up to these Blacks. I will put them in line.'"

"That has been the basis of his campaign. To go from 'Obama is not American' to 'Harris is not black,'" he added. "It's the same song, just a different lyric and that is what he feels put him in the White House in '16, and it'll put him in the White House now."

"Now he's going to deliver she said she [Kamal Harris] was Indian when she was celebrated as the first Black district attorney in San Francisco, first Black attorney general in California, first Black woman U.S. senator from California, first Black woman vice president," he later added before asking, "All of a sudden now, we didn't know she was Black?"

"I mean, how long are we going to keep playing this old song of Donald Trump?" he stated. "Donald, it's time to get off the stage and let some folks come on."

Watch below or at the link.

Keep reading... Show less

'What he said was appalling!' Clash on CNN as Trump ally applauds ex-president's interview

A clash erupted on CNN between a pair of former White House communications directors for Joe Biden and Donald Trump over the ex-president's appearance before a group of Black journalists.

Trump took the stage Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists Annual Convention & Career Fair, where he struck an immediately hostile tone with reporters and lobbed racist insults at Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield wondered what the GOP nominee hoped to accomplish.

Keep reading... Show less