Kamala Harris says Trump’s racist attacks show ‘the American people deserve better’

Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that the American people deserve better than former President Donald Trump after he questioned her ethnicity.

Trump sank to a new low of mudslinging on Wednesday at a convention for black journalists, accusing Harris of “turnover.”[ing] Black” for political points. Harris was scheduled to deliver remarks just hours later at the biennial conference of the black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho in Houston, Texas.

“We all remember here what those four years were like, and today we got another reminder,” Harris told the crowd. “It was the same old show, the division and the disrespect.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not react with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” she continued. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”

Trump has long questioned the racial identity of his opponents and championed the baseless “birther” conspiracy theory that suggested former President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

“I’ve known her for a long time — indirectly, not directly, a lot — and she was always of Indian descent and she just promoted Indian descent,” Trump said in response to a question from moderator Rachel Scott of ABC News. “I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago, when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as Black.”

“So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”

Harris was born in California. She is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.

In his interview Wednesday, the former president also attacked Scott and her employer for being “nasty” and “rude” after she questioned him about his accusations against Obama and his comments that immigrants took “black jobs.”

Trump has stepped up his criticism of ABC News, which will hold another presidential debate on September 10. he tries to duck out of his commitment to be present.

Earlier this week, he said that while he would “probably” face Harris in the debate, he was unsure whether it would benefit his own bid.

“Everyone knows who I am,” he told Fox News.

Harris, in response, declined her own challenge and urged the former president to appear.

In Houston, the vice president cast her candidacy as a choice between the future and the past, asking attendees to help drive the vote ahead of November.

“When we organize, mountains move,” Harris said. “When we mobilize, countries change. And when we vote, we make history.”