CNN anchor Michael Smerconish called black men who felt Kamala Harris is not really black ‘low information voters.’
During his show on Saturday, Smerconish played a clip from CBS affiliate WHP filmed at a central Pennsylvania barber shop late last month asking black men what they thought about the vice president.
In the clip, a local journalist was speaking to black men at a barber shop when some said the didn’t think Harris was black.
But Smerconish was quick to correct them, with a disparaging label.
‘When I played that audio on my SiriusXM radio program on Thursday, many callers who self-identified as African American were quick to tell me that those men were the exception, not the rule,’ Smerconish said.
‘Some describe them as low-information voters no different than you’d find among whites.’
CNN anchor Michael Smerconish said people are calling black men who discussed Kamala Harris’s race ‘low information voters’
A local news station asked men at a central Pennsylvania barber shop what they thought about the vice president taken before Trump’s remarks on her race
Harris was born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, with Donald Trump last week suggesting that she had only leaned into the black part of her identity relatively recently
Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who frequently calls out liberal hypocrisy, was among those accusing Smerconish of pompous behavior.
‘Among the many hilarious parts of this CNN video is that, after the Black men explain their views on Kamala and race, the White Man of Authority calls them stupid, and says that’s not how the majority of black people think, which he knows because his black friends told him so,’ Greenwald posted on X.
Smerconish himself is a former Republican who has been an independent voter since 2010. He recently said that Harris has questions to answer about her ultra-liberal track record as she attempts to pivot to the center for her presidential campaign.
The segment played after Donald Trump’s decision to question Kamala Harris’s 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 ‘Indian all the way.’ He also said Harris ‘happened to turn black’ to appeal to black voters, a phrase that is said to have elicited gasps from his own campaign.
The clip starts with the local journalist asking, ‘Is Kamala going to make you a little more likely or less likely to vote Democrat?’
One man wearing a black shirt replied: ‘Hold on. Wait. Is Kamala black, yes or no?’
‘I’m going to let her speak on it. But to me, no,’ said a second man.
The man in the black shirt repeated the question to the man wearing a blue hat sitting on one side next to him and another man in a Marvel shirt sitting on the other side.
‘I share that same view,’ 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 of the men said they do not feel Kamala Harris is black
Others said they had heard she is half black and half Asian
Trump is reportedly ‘upset and annoyed’ that Harris has stolen the campaign spotlight and had been thinking she was inauthentic with how she presented her race.
Harris is the first black, female, and South-Asian-heritage vice president, but Trump suggested her embrace of black culture was phony at the Chicago conference.
Her mother was Indian, while her father is Jamaican.
He said: ‘She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of 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?
‘And you know what, I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t. Because she was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person. I think somebody should look into that.’
Trump said he ‘didn’t know’ Harris was black and thought she was ‘Indian all the way’ at the National Association of Black Journalists om Chicago
Trump then doubled down on Truth Social saying, ‘Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!’
At an Atlanta rally on Saturday, the former president hurled another insult at her suggesting she does not know how to pronounce her own name and that she has a ‘low IQ.’
Trump has been making an intensive effort to secure black votes and having some success.
Black business owners in Atlanta said they related to Trump more now that he has been criminally prosecuted.
A Daily Show correspondent was shocked when he gathered a focus group of black voters and half of them revealed they were set to cast a ballot for the former president.
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