Note from Asha: Trump Knows Exactly What He's Doing
(At least when it comes to his explicit racism.)
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Dear Reader,
It’s hard to decide which public manifestation of Donald Trump’s panic and deterioration has been the most astonishing since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race two weeks ago. It’s a toss up, but I think his “interview” at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago might be the winner. From the minute Trump opened his mouth to when his own staff pulled him off stage less than an hour later – you could almost imagine the cartoon hook coming in from stage right – it was a train wreck. Actually, more like a dumpster fire going full speed on train tracks until it got hit by a meteor. It was hard not to rubberneck that one. But as horrifying and seemingly spontaneously idiotic as Trump’s performance was, it may have been more calculated and strategic than most people realize.
The part where Trump appeared to completely self-destruct (more than usual) was when ABC correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump whether he believed that Harris was a “DEI hire.” In response, Trump claimed that until only recently, Harris had embraced only her Indian heritage from her biracial background, and had downplayed her Jamaican roots. In fact, Trump claimed, he had not even realized that Harris was Black until just several years ago, when she suddenly “turned Black.” In making this claim, Trump appeared to be questioning the authenticity of Harris’ Black identity, which seems like…well, a weird and kind of dumb thing to do at a professional affinity event in front of a Black audience. (The crowd audibly gasped when Trump made this statement.)
Now, saying weird and dumb things is, at this point, par for the course for Trump. But if you’re like me, you might have been left wondering, what was the point? For one thing, the claim was not true (though lying is also par for the course so this is not surprising): Harris has always claimed and leaned into her Black identity. I mean, her big zinger against Biden in the 2020 primary debate drew on her experiences being bussed as a child to correct for racial disparities in the public schools in her area. She went to Howard University, a historically Black institution, and has been a very vocally proud member of her Black sorority, AKA. Trump’s casual and explicit racism has been well known for a while now, but one would think that, if he voluntarily showed up to an event with a Black audience, he would at the very least not want to alienate that audience for the time he was on stage.
But things might make more sense if the audience he was speaking to wasn’t necessarily the one in front of him. And it probably wasn’t even his MAGA base, which gets riled into a frothy frenzy by this kind of incendiary rhetoric. Rather, Trump may have been seeding a narrative he hoped would resonate with the ideology of a relatively unknown Black activist movement known as the African Descendants of Slavery, or ADOS. ADOS is a movement that was co-founded in 2016 by Yvette Carnill and Antonio Moore and argues that reparations for the institution of slavery are economically and morally justified. Now, this is a policy debate that has been around for a while and may not seem so unusual. But ADOS is unique in that it creates a separate identity only for Blacks who can trace their lineage from American-owned slaves (the subgroup to whom ADOS argues reparations are owed), distinguishing them from the Black immigrant diaspora (or even descendants of slaves from other countries). For instance, ADOS adherents have attacked journalists like Joy Reid, whose parents are immigrants from Guayana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for not having “real” American lineage. During the 2020 primaries, ADOS was vocal in arguing that Harris was not “really” Black, either. It’s sort of a different version of birtherism, and you might see where this is going.
Now, obviously there is no monolithic Black identity, just like there is no monolithic Indian identity (speaking from personal experience), or white identity, or any other racial or ethnic identity. However, scholars note that ADOS offers a convenient fissure that can be exploited to divide what is otherwise a political identity built on shared racial solidarity. Critics of ADOS note that the group’s divisive rhetoric and nativist undercurrent find a natural affinity with MAGA anti-immigrant and “blood and soil” narratives. (Carnill actually embraced that specific phrase, typically associated with Nazis, in a Twitter post.) In fact, ADOS has found allies in right-wing provocateurs like Ann Coulter. In other words, the ADOS ideology is an opportunity to divide and conquer a Democratic (big “D”) voting bloc that might otherwise be drawn to Harris, as a Black woman, and whose turnout in large numbers would be a big problem for Trump. To wit: Get enough Black voters to decide that Harris isn’t “one of them” – or is even antithetical to their interests – and prevent her from gaining ground against Trump.
It’s worth looking at 2016 to understand why the Trump campaign might conclude that this is their best bet in the current political landscape. It is well known that in that election, the largest demographic targeted by Russian disinformation was Black voters. The Trump campaign, using data harvested by Cambridge Analytica (run by Steve Bannon), uncannily mirrored these efforts, also targeting Black voters. (Coincidence? You decide.) What’s important here are the tactics: The narratives used by Russia, or Cambridge Analytica, were similar in that they weren’t trying to persuade Black voters to vote for Trump. That was probably an uphill battle. Rather, they tried to employ the three “Ds”: Depress (don’t vote at all), Deflect (cast a vote in a way that doesn’t count, like “texting” a vote), or (Re)Direct (vote for a third party candidate). Basically, the idea was to ensure that Hillary would lose enough votes to make enough of a difference in key areas that would have a large impact on the electoral college. (Man, if I were a foreign intelligence service, some internal polling data would sure come in handy to do something like this!)
Could Trump really siphon off enough Black voters with this kind of talk to affect voter turnout in his favor? It’s hard to say, but the low Black voter turnout in 2016 was striking, compared to previous elections. A Pew Research Survey of nonvoters in 2016 found that 19% of Black nonvoters didn’t cast a ballot because they didn’t like either of the candidates – that number was only 3% in 2012. In fact, more than a third of the voters who voted for Obama in 2012 but stayed home in 2016 – about 1.6 million people nationwide – were Black, and election post-mortems suggested that this lower turnout cost Clinton the election. My gut tells me that this election has a very different feel – and the Harris campaign has a very different energy and momentum than Clinton’s – but even so, Trump’s success in dampening the Black vote in 2016 might make his campaign conclude that this is his Hail Mary against Harris.
If this was in fact Trump’s strategy in appearing at the NABJ convention, he did get a win: Trump’s “Kamala turned Black” comment has probably been the most talked about event on news channels and interviews over the last week, so the “debate” over Harris’ identity has been amplified and mainstreamed. It’s heartening that most journalists and commentators covering the topic have categorically rejected Trump’s claims, and even some Trump supporting commentators and politicians have tried to distance themselves or change the topic when pressed on it. But the conversation that Trump might be trying to influence is not one that is happening on mainstream media – it’s happening in the corners of the internet and in social media conversations most of us aren’t a part of. As I’ve always said, Trump is an information warrior – and though it might have looked like he crashed and burned onstage, there’s a pretty good chance he knew exactly what he was doing.
Stay Informed,
Asha
We all know Trump is intellectually a back-of-the-classroom third grader. But he has a kind of animal cunning, and a wolf’s instinct for how to herd and divide the sheep. I agree that the attack on Harris’ racial identity was calculated as was being pulled off the stage so he could play victim for his white, racist cultists.
Asha - appreciate the insight. While I would not believe this might have been Trump’s idea on his own to try to divide and depress part of the Black vote - and I believe you reference this possibility twice in your post - I would believe this to be part of the playbook designed by Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, and Steve Miller, among others. I would also not be surprised if these efforts were not also still being supported/coordinated by and with outside entities/governments. How can we protect against the chaos and devision Trump/Stone/Bannon want to create?