For the first time since she became the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris addressed head-on the false claims made by Donald Trump about her racial identity, as well as the former president’s history of racial division throughout his public life.

During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Trump was asked why he felt comfortable during a recent appearance at a conference of Black journalists to falsely claim that the vice president “turned Black” after previously emphasizing her South Asian heritage. Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, rejected the premise that she has to defend her own racial identity.

But Trump, standing a few feet away from Harris, claimed he no longer cared about the topic.

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“I don’t care what she is,” Trump said. “I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is okay with me.”

He then repeated falsehoods about Harris’ identity, saying, “All I can say is I read where she was not Black… And then I read that she was Black, and that’s okay. Either one was okay with me. That’s up to her.”

In a recent televised interview as the Democratic nominee, a CNN journalist asked Harris to respond to Trump’s remarks about her race. She curtly dismissed his comments as “the same old playbook.”

But on Tuesday, she took time to address it directly.

“Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president, who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race...

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