Donald Trump Jr. Shares, Then Deletes, a Tweet Questioning Kamala Harris’s Race

[GMDino]

The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the Birtherism tree....


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-kamala-harris.html

Quote:Donald Trump Jr. Shares, Then Deletes, a Tweet Questioning Kamala Harris’s Race


WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, shared another person’s tweet with his millions of followers during the Democratic debate on Thursday that falsely claimed Senator Kamala Harris was not black enough to be discussing the plight of black Americans.

“Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves,” Ali Alexander, a member of a right-wing constellation of media personalities, wrote on Twitter. “She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

Mr. Trump, a valuable Republican surrogate as his father faces a bruising 2020 race, posted the tweet of unverified information, then asked his more than three million followers: “Is this true? Wow.” By the end of the night, Mr. Trump had deleted his message, and by Friday, a spokesman said it had all been a misunderstanding.
“Don’s tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it’s not something he had ever heard before,” said the spokesman, Andy Surabian, “and once he saw that folks were misconstruing the intent of his tweet, he quickly deleted it.”


But by then, the original message, questioning the background of a presidential candidate who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, had already spread far and wide. For people like Mr. Alexander — an alt-right fringe figure who has also gone by the name Ali Akbar — the entire point of commenting was to go viral and counteract any progress made by a Democrat like Ms. Harris. She caught Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumed front-runner, off guard on Thursday night by questioning his track record on race.

Because his tweet was elevated by valuable surrogates like the president’s son, Mr. Alexander has become part of a loose network of accounts weaponized by the Trump campaign as part of its effort to discredit candidates.





The facts are these: Ms. Harris, a first-term senator from California and a former prosecutor, is the biracial daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother. She has faced repeated questions about her race throughout her career, but has at times resisted being put into one category or another. In an interview with The Washington Post this year, Ms. Harris called herself “an American,” defying calls at various points for her to choose.


“My point was: I am who I am,” Ms. Harris said at the time. “I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.”

On Thursday evening, Ms. Harris was more forceful in relaying her experiences with racism. “Growing up, my sister and I had to deal with the neighbor who told us her parents couldn’t play with us because she — because we were black,” Ms. Harris said.NT


She was also forceful in her criticism of Mr. Biden, who served as vice president to the nation’s first black president but who drew intense scrutiny a week ago for expressing a willingness to work with lawmakers who have different views — a group that at one point included segregationist senators.

Ms. Harris told Mr. Biden during the debate that it was “hurtful” that he’d worked with segregationists. She also accused him of working with them to oppose busing students to schools to better integrate them, a claim Mr. Biden denied.

“And, you know,” Ms. Harris said, “there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Her impassioned embrace of her personal history was what Mr. Alexander and then Mr. Trump pounced on. By the end of the evening, even though Mr. Trump had deleted his tweet, a round of accounts began sharing the contents of Mr. Alexander’s tweet questioning Ms. Harris’s background.

View image on Twitter

Quote:
[/url]Ben Collins

@oneunderscore__




The President’s son earlier this hour.

2,437
10:27 PM - Jun 27, 2019

This activity caught the attention of Caroline Orr, a Virginia-based researcher who studies disinformation and elections. Mr. Alexander is a real person, but Ms. Orr hinted that the activity may have been the work of Twitter bots meant to spread his misinformation.

Quote:
Caroline Orr@RVAwonk




What a weird coincidence that a group of accounts, starting with Ali, decided to tweet the exact same thing (verbatim) about Kamala Harris within minutes of each other tonight. #DemDebate2

[url=https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1144451342238408704]27.3K
11:43 PM - Jun 27, 2019

“A lot of suspect accounts are pushing the ‘Kamala Harris is not Black’ narrative tonight,” Ms. Orr wrote on Twitter. “It’s everywhere and it has all the signs of being a coordinated/artificial operation.”


On Friday, Mr. Alexander denied that his tweet had been part of an organized effort to spread that message at all, and he has characterized as racist inquiries into what he meant by his original tweet.


Lily Adams, an aide to Ms. Harris, on Friday criticized Mr. Trump’s tweet. “This is the same type of racist attack his father used to attack Barack Obama,” she said. “It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.”


Mr. Trump, for his part, had moved on: He sent a fund-raising text message to followers of the Trump campaign.

[CJD]

I can't tell if his point is that being half black = / = black or if he's saying Jamaicans aren't black.

Either way, I'm confused.

[6andcounting]

(06-29-2019, 11:00 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I can't tell if his point is that being half black = / = black or if he's saying Jamaicans aren't black.

Either way, I'm confused.

According to Ali's quote in the article, Harris claimed she is a descendant of American slavery. Ali's Tweet was claiming her ancestors where slaves in Jamaica. Trump Jr retweeting asking if it was true. 

[CJD]

(06-29-2019, 11:27 AM)6andcounting Wrote: According to Ali's quote in the article, Harris claimed she is a descendant of American slavery. Ali's Tweet was claiming her ancestors where slaves in Jamaica. Trump Jr retweeting asking if it was true. 

Well, he said she implied it. As far as I know, she never said she was a descendant of slaves. She's just...black. An "American Black" by both words' definitions. You don't have to be the descendant of slaves to be black. I guess I just don't understand what point the guy is even trying to make. Unless he's just trying to Obama her.

[Dill]

(06-29-2019, 09:37 AM)GMDino Wrote: The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the Birtherism tree....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-kamala-harris.html

Mr. Trump, a valuable Republican surrogate as his father faces a bruising 2020 race, posted the tweet of unverified information, then asked his more than three million followers: “Is this true? Wow.” By the end of the night, Mr. Trump had deleted his message, and by Friday, a spokesman said it had all been a misunderstanding.
“Don’s tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it’s not something he had ever heard before,” said the spokesman, Andy Surabian,

Is Trump jr's mother a *****?   WHOOAAA calm down everyone. I'm not saying she is.

It's just a QUESTION.  Like where was OBAMA born.  Not saying he WASN'T born in the US. At least he is an AMERICAN black. 

Wow. Half-Indian. Unless she is American Indian, that changes everything.

Thanks to the alt-right deep researchers for getting this info out there. Can't trust the MSM.

[*michaelsean*]

(06-29-2019, 12:06 PM)Dill Wrote: Is Trump jr's mother a *****?   WHOOAAA calm down everyone. I'm not saying she is.

It's just a QUESTION.  Like where was OBAMA born.  Not saying he WASN'T born in the US. At least he is an AMERICAN black. 

Wow. Half-Indian. Unless she is American Indian, that changes everything.

Thanks to the alt-right deep researchers for getting this info out there. Can't trust the MSM.

Did Mitt Romney pay his taxes?

[Mike M (the other one)]

(06-29-2019, 09:10 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Did Mitt Romney pay his taxes?

I would ask Al Sharpton and Newt Grinch that question first.

[BmorePat87]

Pieces of shit have kids who are pieces of shit.

[*michaelsean*]

(07-01-2019, 11:45 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I would ask Al Sharpton and Newt Grinch that question first.

They weren't the ones Harry wondered about in the Senate.

[*michaelsean*]

(07-01-2019, 12:43 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Pieces of shit have kids who are pieces of shit.

How'd you like this guy to be your teacher?

[SunsetBengal]

Who cares? Harris is a big liar, anyway.

https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-caught-in-lie-on-her-biography-and-scientists-discover-fire-is-hot/

Quote:Kamala Harris lied on her biography when she said that she was only the second class at Berkeley to have integrated. As it turns out, that is a lie. Her parents were both professions and when she was 7, her mother took her to Canada, where she went to school right up until graduation. But even with taking that into account, she lied through her teeth. She did attend Berkeley for two years and then she and her mom moved to Canada, when Kamala was just 7, where she attended school throughout her high school. Her claim is that she was just the second class to be desegregated at Berkeley but the proof says otherwise:

Quote:Kamala was born in 1964. The first set of school pictures you see are from 1963, before she was born. Notice the diversity of the students? The second one is from the year she was born and it clearly shows a diverse student population.

[GMDino]

(07-01-2019, 01:38 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Who cares?  Harris is a big liar, anyway.

https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-caught-in-lie-on-her-biography-and-scientists-discover-fire-is-hot/

Seems like a "very reputable" source.



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/us/politics/kamala-harris-berkeley-busing.html

Quote:After Ms. Harris spoke about her elementary school experience on Thursday, conspiracy theorists quickly sprung on the story, arguing that Berkeley’s schools were never segregated because some black students attended Ms. Harris’s predominantly white school before busing began. The district put out a statement on Friday supporting Ms. Harris’s account.

“Our elementary schools,” the district’s statement said, “reflected the racial composition of our neighborhoods, which like many neighborhoods across America reflected the history of segregation stemming from policies which restricted the opportunities of nonwhite residents.”

https://www.berkeleyschools.net/2019/06/the-history-of-integration-in-berkeley-elementary-schools-and-senator-harris/

Quote:The History of Integration in Berkeley Elementary Schools and Senator Harris
We have received multiple requests from media about Senator Kamala Harris and her experience with the Berkeley Public Schools. Senator Harris is correct in describing her experience in 1969 as the second year of the busing integration program. All Berkeley elementary schools were integrated through an innovative two-way busing plan, which was implemented voluntarily by our district beginning in 1968.

There has been some confusion in the media and social media around the Berkeley schools and integration due to the fact that our high school was already “integrated”, as evidenced, for example, by high school yearbooks which show children of many race/ethnicities at school together prior to 1968. In Berkeley, we only have one comprehensive high school, so it was integrated by default (de facto). Our elementary schools, however, reflected the racial composition of our neighborhoods, which like many neighborhoods across America reflected the history of segregation stemming from policies which restricted the opportunities of non-white residents.

We recently celebrated the 50 year anniversary of our voluntary busing plan, and you can find additional details here, including a chart showing the racial composition of our elementary schools in 1963 compared to 1969.

https://www.berkeleyschools.net/2018/12/50th-anniversary-of-berkeleys-pioneering-busing-plan-for-school-integration/

By why let facts get in the way of a good story and calling her a "liar"?

[CJD]

(07-01-2019, 01:38 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Who cares?  Harris is a big liar, anyway.

https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-caught-in-lie-on-her-biography-and-scientists-discover-fire-is-hot/

It was a good try.

As a side note, this may be the most ironically comical thing I've read in quite some time:

Quote:She could have saved herself a lot of embarrassment, although I’m not sure liberals can be embarrassed by anything, otherwise they couldn’t do or say some of the things they do.

[*bfine32*]

So we've got one that folks are offended if you claim she's Indian and we have another that folks are offended if you claim she's not an Indian





I KNOW!!

[GMDino]

(07-01-2019, 03:10 PM)bfine32 Wrote: So we've got one that folks are offended if you claim she's Indian and we have another that folks are offended if you claim she's not an Indian





I KNOW!!

Actually this is a different race that the Trump family wants to slur as "liars". 

whether you know or not

[BmorePat87]

(07-01-2019, 01:38 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Who cares?  Harris is a big liar, anyway.

https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-caught-in-lie-on-her-biography-and-scientists-discover-fire-is-hot/

Both of her parents were "professions"?!?!?!

LOL, random blog on the internet seems to disagree with her bio. She moved to Canada when she was 12, not 7, and moved back to go to college. Her class also was the 2nd to be integrated with busing, previously being 95% white. 

Source: her book, cnn, and factcheck.org

[BmorePat87]

It's sad that in a thread warning against a new birther-esque lie, we have people spreading fake news to attack the target of the new birther-esque lie.

[hollodero]

(07-01-2019, 01:38 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Who cares?  Harris is a big liar, anyway.

https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-caught-in-lie-on-her-biography-and-scientists-discover-fire-is-hot/

Seriously. You cannot base any opinion on a source like that.

(07-01-2019, 03:10 PM)bfine32 Wrote: So we've got one that folks are offended if you claim she's Indian and we have another that folks are offended if you claim she's not an Indian

You're right. As usual, an only slightly far-fetched leftist piece of stupidity is the real issue of concern here, not the spreading of mendacious conspiracies to smear a democratic candidate as a blatant liar, or Trump jr's unnecessary speculations about her true heritage.
Keep them all oh so honest.

[*bfine32*]

(07-01-2019, 06:11 PM)hollodero Wrote: You're right. As usual, an only slightly far-fetched leftist piece of stupidity is the real issue of concern here, not the spreading of mendacious conspiracies to smear a democratic candidate as a blatant liar, or Trump jr's unnecessary speculations about her true heritage.
Keep them all oh so honest.

Nah, the real issue is Trump Jr is a POS. I just found the dynamic ironic. 

[Dill]

(07-01-2019, 03:10 PM)bfine32 Wrote: So we've got one that folks are offended if you claim she's Indian and we have another that folks are offended if you claim she's not an Indian
I KNOW!!

Probably the same folks who were offended when Trump pushed us to the brink of war with Iran

and then were offended again when he called off an airstrike with planes in the air.