It was a topic that seemed destined to be the subject of much discussion during Tuesday night's debate: race.
Moderator David Muir asked Donald Trump about his controversial comments about Vice President Kamala Harris in July, when he told a National Association of Black Journalists convention that he didn't “know she was black until several years ago when she turned black… So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?”
At the time, those comments sparked outrage, and upon hearing them repeated by Muir, Trump said, “I don’t care what she is … Whatever she wants to be is fine with me.” But he raised the issue again, saying he had read that she was not black and then later that she was.
Harris, who is Black and Indian-American, said Trump “has consistently throughout his career tried to use race to divide the American people.”
She cited several examples of Trump’s controversial actions on race, including his lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace, alleged racial discrimination at Trump’s housing projects and his support for the death penalty for defendants in the 1989 Central Park Five case, who were later exonerated.
The vice president said Americans did not want an approach that “constantly tried to divide us.”
“We see in each other a friend, a neighbor,” Harris said, adding that she meets regularly with people who say they want a national discourse that focuses on the “dreams of the American people” and not on race.
In response, Trump defended his stance on the Central Park Five and moved on to a debate on economics, saying: “I built one of the greatest economies in the history of the world.”
