Presented by Wells Fargo.

Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Thursday, August 1st.

Former President Donald Trump was hoping to steal the microphone away from Kamala Harris this week.

Well, he certainly did that yesterday, but not in the politically advantageous way, perhaps he was hoping.

During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalist Conference, Trump questioned

whether Harris was even black, said he would pardon January 6 rioters who specifically attacked

police officers, and dodged questions about whether he thought his running mate, J.D. Vance, would be ready to go on

day once should something happen to him as president. But just when our heads were spinning from all

of this, Trump doubled down on questions about Harris's biracial background at his rally last night,

signaling this is now a new strategy in In joining me now to discuss that,

as well as some news he has about Harris Veeb Stakes is my colleague Eugene Daniels. Good morning,

Eugene. Hey, girl. Chaos. Chaos abounds at all times. So, Eugene, whatever happened to Harris,

the Borders are and Harris the Medicare for All champion. Now we've got Harris, the person who is not a real black person. What the heck, Eugene, is going on?

There's so many wild things about this, but I think if you're looking at like the political, right, like you stick to like the actual political aspect of this for a bit. On Monday, we reported, we had talked to the Trump campaign. We had talked to Republicans who said, you know, we were calling our back heels for a week. And now we're coming out the gate. We like have a, we're going to, you know, call her the borders are. We're going to tie her to everything that, that know, was done in the Biden-Harris administration.

Like, we got this. You know, we Republicans know how to tussle with her. That is not the case at all.

This is the opposite of what Republicans on the Hill, Mike Johnson being one of them. And a lot of Republicans want to be talking about

to be very clear for people who are listening, Vice President Kamala Harris is Black. She is also

Indian-American. Those two things are not, they can exist in the same person. And a lot of people

in this country, many people in this country,

are of mixed race. So I think the thing that's really interesting here is like there was always

the drama about him coming to NABJ, first of all. But Republicans were saying, no, this is a good

time for him, a good place for him to get in front of black journalists and therefore the black community.

...