It was not surprising that Trump would try to exploit Harris' background for personal gain given that he is running the most racially-charged presidential campaign that America has seen since the 1968 run of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace. After all, he elevated his own stature from the realm of a New York gadfly to the mainstream of American politics by trafficking lies about the eligibility of President Barack Obama, who was the nation's first Black president. But it was a sickening spectacle to watch the President of the United States use a podium at the White House to question whether the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee -- who was born in Oakland, California, and is the first Black and South Asian American woman on a major party ticket -- might somehow be ineligible for the post. It was a clear attempt by Trump to stir controversy and divert attention from his inept handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the more than 168,000 American deaths. After Trump first dangled the theory Thursday in response to a reporter's question, during what was billed as a press briefing, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Marc Short, the chief of staff to the vice president, stirred more aspersions about Harris' background on Friday in two different interviews. When asked whether he believes Harris is a qualified candidate for the vice presidency, Kushner said, "I personally have no reason to believe she's not," but said the theory was "out there." View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling The question about Harris' eligibility was raised by Chapman University professor John Eastman in an opinion piece in Newsweek. (Eastman, a Republican, ran for California Attorney General in 2010 but was defeated in the Republican primary; Harris won the Democratic primary and ultimately won the race.) Kushner, who is both a White House and a campaign aide to Trump, pointed out that the President said "he had no idea whether that's right or wrong" — a technique Trump often uses when he's trying to shirk responsibility for spreading disinformation. "I don't see that as promoting it. But at the end of the day, it's something that's out there," Kushner said in a morning interview with CBS News. In a different interview Friday, Short then suggested that Harris has "imported" socialist policies "from overseas." "I think that we can celebrate the fact that a daughter of two immigrants has had such a celebrated political career, to be elected statewide and now be the nominee for the Democratic Party," Short said during an appearance on Fox Business. "I think what's more concerning is some of the socialist ideas she seems to have imported from overseas as well." Even before Trump's comments about Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian parents, he had centered his campaign on his efforts to create fears of "otherness" in the hearts of White Americans. He cast peaceful demonstrators in the streets after George Floyd's death as "THUGS"
