Donald Trump was seeking to seize back the spotlight that had eluded him since President Joe Biden’s shock decision last month to drop his re-election bid jolted the US election.

But the Republican former president did so this week in a way he might not have intended. Appearing in Chicago on Wednesday at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists, an ill-tempered Trump disparaged his hosts and then questioned whether Biden’s presumed replacement atop the Democratic ticket, vice-president Kamala Harris, was actually Black.

“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?” Trump said of Harris, who is of mixed Jamaican and Indian heritage.