Former President Donald Trump stirred yet another racial controversy on the campaign trail late last week, bragging about his “beautiful white skin” after he had just finished criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Warren, Michigan.
During his rambling speech, Trump made the controversial remark after taking aim at Harris’ plan to raise taxes on billionaires to boost the middle class.
“She wants to tax companies,” Trump told his cheering supporters. “You know what happens when you tax them? They leave. A lot of these big companies, you know, they’re run by inter—they live in Switzerland. They have very glamorous lives. They have the life that I could’ve had if I decided not to do this, actually,” he said, referring to his third White House run.
Adding, “Somebody said to me, ‘Are you glad you did it?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, but I could’ve been on the best beaches in the world. I own the best beaches in the world,’” he bragged.
Living up to his reputation for perpetuating dog whistles and stirring controversy to energize his supporters, Trump inexplicably segued to an awkward discussion about his skin color, complaining that his campaign against Harris had cramped his style and prevented him from hitting the beach this past summer.
Despite this setback, Trump boasted that he still had “beautiful white skin.”
“I could’ve been at the great Turnberry in Scotland. I could’ve been anywhere I wanted to be. I could’ve had those waves smacking me in the face. That white, beautiful white skin that I have would be nice and tan,” Trump emphasized. “I got the whitest skin ’cause I never have time to go out in the sun. But I have that beautiful white, and you know what? It could’ve been beautiful, tanned, beautiful.”
Ugh! The optics make me sick.
— Susana Mounts – Слава Украïнi!🇺🇸🇺🇦🌻🌊💙 (@SusanaMounts) November 2, 2024
Notably, Trump’s latest comments were almost identical to those he gave during his notorious rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” amid a night filled with racism and hate directed at Harris, immigrants, and people of color.
“The greatest resorts in the world, I could’ve been extremely happy,” Trump said, implying he had eschewed a millionaire’s lifestyle to be president. “I could’ve had those beautiful waves smack me in the face. I could’ve had the beautiful sun tan, this white-white skin could’ve been tanned and beautiful.”
The next day, the Rev. Al Sharpton appeared on MSNBC, where he accused Trump of sending smoke signals to show his solidarity with extremist groups, white supremacists, and voters with racist sentiments.
“But let’s also go to what Donald Trump himself said last night that some of the Black men groups that I’ve been debating about, why they can’t be with Trump,” Sharpton said, referring to pockets of support for Trump in the Black community.
Sharpton continued, “He said, ‘I could be laying out on the beach with my white-white skin, getting tanned.’ I mean, this is Donald Trump’s mouth saying this. So, I said to those on the fence, this is not a real racial signal? My pretty white, beautiful, white-white skin? Donald Trump said this last night at his homecoming.”
Video of Sharpton’s response was still circulating on social media, with the old-school civil rights advocate and political commentator compared Trump’s rally to the infamous 1939 Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden by the German American Bund, saying, “I think it lived up to that.”
Al Sharpton has MELTDOWN saying Trump was signaling racists by talking about TANNING.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) October 28, 2024
“He said I could be laying out in the beach with my white-white skin getting tanned…”
pic.twitter.com/XPdzkZVcjZ
However, Sharpton faced swift criticism from conservatives, who accused him of race-baiting.
“Al Sharpton says the Trump rally was definitely a N@zi rally because Trump talked about getting a suntan on his “white skin,” one X user wrote. “Al Sharpton is a race hustler who has done little to nothing to improve race relations in this country and this impotent attempt to stoke racial hostility, is laughable. We see through this now.”
Trump, whose reliance on bronzers and skin toners to maintain a darker complexion has made him a punchline, told the crowd that he would “make America great again,” even if it meant doing so without a real tan.
Locked in a tight race with Harris, and just days away from the election, Trump made no effort to address his policy positions during Friday’s speech in Michigan, instead seeming fixated on the topic of skin color, with some liberals thinking Trump was going out his way to make this point, especially after he told the same stale joke at Madison Square Garden five days earlier.
The speech reflected a pattern of incoherence for Trump, marked by a troubling tendency to ramble and contradict himself, further fueling concerns about his grasp on key issues and the impact of his age after Trump turned 78 in June.
In another speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Friday, Trump told rally-goers that he has a “very fertile brain” while defending himself against critics who continue to assail the former president as “cognitively impaired.”
“I have a very fertile, a very fertile, brain, but it’s the weave and we do it, this way you tell one story and you cover like 15 sub plots but you get down to the final answer,” Trump said, according to Newsweek. “They used to say, he rambled, I don’t ramble. I do a weave, you know what a weave is? It’s a story.”
Meanwhile, Harris, if elected, would become the first woman president, as well as the first president of Indian descent and the second Black president. It’s not clear whether this was the point Trump intended to emphasize, but the comments appeared to echo his previous criticisms about Harris’ mixed heritage.
The Republican nominee has consistently labeled Harris as “a low I.Q. individual” during his rally speeches.
Back in August, the Trump campaign faced allegations of racism after making a social media post that attacked Harris by juxtaposing an image of immigration chaos next to an image of a quiet townhome community in manicured surroundings, aiming to depict a dystopian vision of what a future under Harris might look like.
“Import the Third World. Become the Third World,” the meme declared, prompting the NAACP to issue a statement accusing the Trump campaign of escalating racial hostilities and anti-immigrant sentiments, while trying to appeal to affluent voters.
Trump also stoked controversy in late July at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual gathering, where he questioned Harris’ racial identity.
His suggestion that Harris had downplayed her Black heritage and was only recently claiming it drew immediate outrage among Black voters as Harris is of both Black and South Asian descent.
“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,” Trump told a panel during an interview at the group’s conference in Chicago.
“So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” the former president continued, trying to discredit Harris’ identity. “But you know what, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”
During the sit-down, ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump about his track record of false claims about political rivals and his inflammatory remarks directed at officials and reporters of color.
“Why would Black voters trust you when you have used language like that?” Scott asked.
Trump refused to answer.
“I don’t think I’ve been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump complained. “You don’t even say hello, how are you.”
From there, Trump ranted that he had appeared at the event as “a favor” and “out of respect for the Black community.”
Trump’s résumé also includes the “birther” conspiracy, which cast doubt on then-President Barack Obama’s birthplace and questioned his eligibility to serve as president, but ultimately proved to be one of Trump’s schemes that regularly target his political enemies.
After facing criticism for labeling Harris as a “DEI hire” in the early days of her campaign, some Republicans advised Trump to shift his focus from personal attacks to Harris’ policies. However, this guidance has been quickly overshadowed by Trump’s continuing attacks on Harris.
