CNN host Michael Smerconish called black men who believed Kamala Harris was not really black “uninformed voters.”
During the day his show on saturdaySmerconish showed a segment from CBS station WHP, filmed late last month in a barbershop in central Pennsylvania, in which black men were asked what they thought of the vice president.
The clip shows a local journalist talking to black men in a barbershop, some of whom said they didn’t think Harris was black.
But Smerconish quickly corrected them with a derogatory label.
“When I played that audio on my SiriusXM radio show on Thursday, many callers who identified as African-American immediately told me that these men were the exception, not the rule,” Smerconish said.
“Some describe them as poorly informed voters, just like white voters.”
CNN host Michael Smerconish said people were calling Black men discussing Kamala Harris’ race “low-information voters”
A local news station asked men in a barbershop in central Pennsylvania what they thought of the vice president’s haircut before Trump’s comments about her race
Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Donald Trump suggested last week that she had only relatively recently focused on the black part of her identity.
Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who frequently criticizes liberal hypocrisy, was among those who accused Smerconish of pretentious behavior.
‘One of the hilarious parts of this CNN video is that after the black men explain their views on Kamala and race, the white authority figure calls them stupid and says that this is not how the majority of black people think, which he knows because his black friends have told him so,’ Greenwald posted on X.
Smerconish himself is a former Republican who has been an independent since 2010. He recently said that Harris needs to answer questions about her ultra-liberal record as she tries to pivot to the center for her presidential campaign.
The clip was played after Donald Trump decided to question Kamala Harris’ racial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday.
Trump said he “didn’t know” Harris was black and thought she was “all Indian.” He also said Harris “just happened to turn black” to appeal to black voters, a statement that reportedly stunned his own campaign.
The segment begins with the local reporter asking, “Will Kamala make you more or less likely to vote Democratic?”
A man in a black shirt replied, “Wait a minute. Wait. Is Kamala black, yes or no?”
“I let her talk about it. But I don’t,” said a second man.
The man in the black shirt repeated the question to the man in the blue hat sitting on one side of him and another man in a Marvel shirt sitting on the other side.
“I share that opinion too,” said the man in the blue hat.
“I heard she was. I heard she’s half black and half Asian,” the man in the Marvel shirt said.
Several men said they don’t think Kamala Harris is black
Others said they heard she was half black and half Asian
Trump is reportedly ‘angry and irritated’ that Harris hbecause she stole the campaign spotlight and was thought to be inauthentic in the way she presented her race.
Harris is the first black female vice president of South Asian descent. However, Trump claimed at the Chicago conference that her embrace of black culture was fake.
Her mother was Indian, her father Jamaican.
He said, ‘She was always of Indian descent and she was just promoting Indian descent. I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she happened to become black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?
“And you know what, I respect both of them, but she clearly doesn’t. Because she was completely Indian and then she went in a different direction and became a black person. I think someone should look into that.”
Trump said he ‘didn’t know’ Harris was black and thought she was ‘all Indian’ at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago
Trump then doubled down on Truth Social, saying, “Crazy Kamala says she’s Indian, not black. This is a big deal. Blatant fake. She’s using everyone, including her racial identity!”
At a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, the former president insulted her again, claiming she doesn’t know how to pronounce her own name and has a “low IQ.”
Trump has made enormous efforts to win the black vote, and has had some success.
Black business owners in Atlanta say they feel more connected to Trump now that he has been criminally charged.
A Daily Show correspondent was shocked when he convened a focus group of black voters and half of them said they would cast their vote for the former president.