I have always thought that Trump was a shrewd person who saw it was to his advantage to sow discord. But recently Trump was invited to appear at a conference of Black journalists and he was interviewed by three journalists.
His most oft-quoted remark from that interview is that Kamala Harris is not really Black. Questioning her identity, he said that she was totally Indian until recently when she decided to be Black. The implication clearly was that she made this change for political advantage.
I am not aware of the reaction of Trump allies to his statement (I found nothing on the internet). All others have trashed the statement as a misstatement of fact. The Vice President said it was "divisive and showed disrespect."
Yes, it was a misstatement of fact. Ms Harris' mother was Indian and her father was Black. While it's true that she identified strongly as a child with her Indian identity, and still does, she also identified, certainly since she was a teenager, as a Black, attending Howard University, a Black college. Her identity as a Black is thus not recent.
The reason why I raised the question of whether Trump is stupid, as opposed to just divisive, is because it's quite possible that he truly doesn't understand what it means to be bi-racial, to have two identifies.
Maybe that's why it comes so natural to him to vilify immigrants – he truly cannot understand being, for example, Muslim and being a proud American.
Which means that he doesn't understand most Americans. Most Americans have an immigrant background and a large percentage are either the child of immigrants or immigrants themselves. In 2013, Census data shows that 13% of all Americans were foreign born, 12% were born here but the child of an immigrant, and 56% were the grandchildren of immigrants. All Americans have an immigrants in their background.
While immigrants to the United States have in the past always worked to assimilate into the larger culture (that is less true recently of Hispanics), many have tried to retain their ethnic identity as well. So they were both proud of their ethnic background and proud to be an American.
To not understand this basic characteristic of most Americans and the nature of American citizenship makes him unfit to be President, on top of all the other reasons why he is unfit.
