Byron Donalds spars with ABC host over questions about Harris' racial identity

Rep. Byron Donalds told ABC host George Stephanopoulos it didn't matter that Republican nominee Donald Trump challenged Vice President Kamala Harris' racial identity even as he repeatedly veered into that territory himself.

In a contentious interview on ABC's "This Week," the Florida Republican went back and forth with Stephanopoulos over Trump's remarks in recent days, with the two interrupting and scolding each other multiple times.

"This is really a phony controversy," Donalds said. "I don't really care, most people don't, but if we're going to be accurate, when Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the Indian-American United States senator. It was actually played up a lot," citing the Associated Press.

Stephanopoulos pushed back.

"And you just repeated the slur again. If it doesn't matter," Stephanopoulos asked Donalds, "why do you all keep questioning her identity? She's always identified as a black woman. She is biracial. She has a Jamaican father and Indian mother. She's always identified as both. Why are you questioning that?"

Donalds, a very vocal Trump loyalist, retorted that it was a hot topic on "social media."

"There are a lot of people who are trying to figure this out, but again, that's a side issue, not the main issue," Donalds said, at which point Stephanopoulos interrupted and said amid cross-talk, "You just did it again. Why do you insist on questioning her racial identity?"

Donalds said most of Trump's speech Saturday was not actually about Harris' racial identity, after which Stephanpoulos asked him if it was OK if Trump was only "questioning someone's racial identity for a couple minutes."

The Florida Republican then returned to criticizing Harris' overall record and again cited an AP headline about Harris from when she was elected to the Senate from California in 2016.

Stephanopoulos pushed back again, asking why he kept repeating the same thing; Donalds retorted that it was the ABC host who kept bringing the issue up, leading to more cross-talk.

"Every single time you repeat the slur," Stephanopoulos countered. "That's exactly my point."

On Wednesday, speaking at a National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, Trump suggested that Harris had only recently become Black, presumably out of political convenience.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. 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,” Trump said to ABC's Rachel Scott at the NABJ. “So I don’t know: Is she Indian or is she Black?”

The Associated Press in November 2016 wrote of Harris: "Harris will enter the chamber as the first Indian woman elected to a Senate seat and the second black woman, following Carol Moseley Braun, who served a single term after being elected in 1992," referencing the former Illinois senator. Different news organizations ran the story under different headlines, as is typical with wire-service articles.

Responding to the Donalds interview on ABC, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who has been highly critical of Trump in recent years, said the former president's attacks on Harris reflect "impulse" as opposed to a thought-out political strategy.

"You can't imagine that anybody who understands anything about politics would say, hey, here's a great idea: Go to the National Association of Black Journalists and question whether Kamala Harris is really black or not," he said during a panel discussion with Stephanopoulos and longtime Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

Christie, who ran against Trump in the 2016 and 2024 GOP primaries, said that Trump's rhetoric reflects panic on his part that the race is changing and not in a way that is favorable to him. Christie also cited Trump's attacks Saturday on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and first lady Marty Kemp.

"This is who he is, George. This is personal. He's juvenile," Christie said.

Brazile likened Trump's rhetoric to that of the birtherism questions that Trump and others promoted during Barack Obama's presidency.

"This is an old playbook. America's tired of this playbook," she said.