Donald Trump Jr. Gets Slammed Over Birtherism Bot Attack On Kamala Harris

Bernie Sanders: "Donald Trump Jr. is a racist too. Shocker."
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Donald Trump Jr. was bashed on Twitter Saturday for boosting a type of “birtherism” campaign against Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) that surged in the wake of her breakout performance in one of the recent debates among Democratic presidential candidates.

A right-wing operative attacked Harris on Twitter after the debate, claiming she had no right to represent American blacks because her father grew up in Jamaica. Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

The attack went viral thanks in part to Donald Jr.’s retweet and an assist from Twitter accounts identified as bots. The onslaught echoed the “birther” campaign against Barack Obama that falsely claiming he was born in Africa and couldn’t legally be president. Donald Trump (with wife Melania ) was a leading voice among a group of conspiracy theorists that promulgated the Obama birther lie.

Earlier this month, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner refused to directly answer whether Trump’s birther lie about Obama was racist.

Screen shot/Donald Trump Jr. tweet

Several other candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination quickly came to Harris’ defense — and lashed Donald Jr. He deleted the birtherism tweet after boosting its readership.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, one of the White House candidates, ripped the Trump family’s birther legacy.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) deadpanned: “Donald Trump Jr. is a racist too. Shocker.” And Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) declared that Harris “doesn’t have shit to prove.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden ― with whom Harris clashed over racial issues during Thursday’s debate among 10 of the Democratic candidates ― slammed the “same forces of hatred” behind the birtherism attacks on Obama and Harris.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was the first of the rival candidates to attack the “racist” attack in a tweet.

Others chimed in:

Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, thanked his wife’s defenders on Twitter for “calling out this crap for what it is.”

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