It wasn’t a debate. It was train wreck interview, and no one from Donald Trump’s party has called on him to step out of the presidential race — but they should.

The former president characterized Vice President Kamala Harris as a woman who can’t be trusted based on her mixed racial background during a livestreamed appearance in Chicago for the annual meeting of the National Assn. of Black Journalists.

“[Kamala] was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said of his likely opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

Harris’ mother is South Asian and her father is Black. It’s still a bit much for Trump to process, though he tried in real time to weaponize this information for his first big showing since Harris became his probable competition in the presidential race.

“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?” he asked. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went … she became a Black person. I think somebody should look into that too.”

Look into what, exactly? And does this critical investigation require a DNA test, a lie detector test, or both? What is so hard about mixed heritage to understand here?

Trump stopped short of using terms like “half-breed” or “unpure,” but the message was clear: mixed-race folks and those of multiple ethnicities are oddball anomalies, flip-floppers who must pick one identity to be trusted. Even then, their birthplace, citizenship and religious beliefs will be dissected and scrutinized by the birther movement he spearheaded against Barack Obama nearly a decade ago.

Race baiting and hating is nothing new to MAGA, of course, but it was still stunning to hear it come out of a presidential candidate’s mouth on a national stage with such confidence and candor.

For those of us who grew up in “mixed” households, the demand that we stay in one lane is not new, but it’s still absurd. Personally, I’m moving between outrage and disappointment that we’re still having these sorts of midcentury conversations in 2024.

Explaining who or what you are to hostile interrogators (i.e., teachers, school bullies) is exhausting, especially as a kid. It certainly was to me. I hoped the world would change in time for my son, who is Arab, Indian and white.

Portraying Harris as The Other in front of a room full of Black journalists Wednesday backfired big time. His attempt to sow doubt about Harris’ blackness, in front of a predominantly Black audience, didn’t appear to win hearts and minds.

There were groans from the audience when he proclaimed he was the best president for Black people since Abraham Lincoln, and when he accused Rachel Scott of ABC News (one of three female interviewers on stage) of giving him a “very rude introduction.” Her tough first questions about his criticisms of Black journalists, Black prosecutors and communities in general were apparently “nasty.”

That sort of speak is ear-candy in the MAGA-verse, where elected officials resurrect Jim Crow-era descriptors like “colored” and use terms like “DEI hire” to discredit Harris. The latter smear suggests that she was picked for VP not because of her accomplishments as California’s attorney general or as a U.S. senator, but because she checks a few demographic boxes. But the GOP’s desperate scramble for a winning screed against Harris is not taking hold yet, at least not in the same way the age card was used against President Biden when he was in the race.

Still, Trump doubled down on his “You can’t trust her” banter via his Truth Social platform. “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black,” he wrote. “This is a big deal. Stone cold phony.” Or perhaps it’s that she’s a threat to Trump’s world order.

Harris is the daughter of, wait for it, immigrants! Her father is Jamaican and her mother is Indian. She attended Howard University, a historically Black university and she pledged to the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. As a U.S. senator representing California, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Harris addressed Trump’s attacks from where she was speaking on Wednesday — the historically African American sorority Sigma Gamma Rho’s 60th International Biennial Boule.

“It was the same old show: the divisiveness, and the disrespect,” Harris said. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength.”

Harris is right. Those of us from mixed parentage already know this, even if Trump wants to portray that truth as a weakness.

A virtual roll call to formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee kicked off on Thursday.

The Democratic National Committee’s electronic voting for their party’s 2024 standard-bearer comes less than two weeks after President Biden, in a blockbuster announcement, ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice president to succeed him at the top of the ticket.

Unlike the Republicans, who held their roll call in-person during their convention in Milwaukee last month, the DNC is using a virtual roll call which will conclude on Monday, two weeks ahead of the Aug. 19 start of the party’s convention at the United Center in Chicago.

HARRIS LEANS IN ON BORDER SECURITY AND TRUMP RELISHES THE FIGHT

But similar to the GOP nomination of former President Trump, there is no drama, as the vice president is the only candidate who qualified by a Tuesday night deadline to have her name placed on the roll call.

2024 AD WARS: TRUMP, HARRIS RACE TO DEFINE VICE PRESIDENT

Biden’s disastrous performance against Trump at a late June debate that was held in Atlanta fueled questions about his physical and mental abilities to serve another four years in the White House.

It also spurred a rising chorus of calls from within his own party for the 81-year-old president to end his bid for a second term in the White House. 

President Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his re-election bid. (Evan Vucci, Pool via AP)

Biden’s immediate backing of Harris ignited a surge of endorsements for the vice president by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders and elders. Within 36 hours, Harris announced that she had locked up her party’s nomination by landing the verbal backing of a majority of the nearly 4,700 convention delegates.

The DNC decided to hold a virtual roll call – which is similar to the one they held four years ago to nominate Biden amid the coronavirus pandemic – in order to formally have a nominee topping their ticket ahead of an Aug. 7 ballot access deadline in Ohio.

“Our delegates have an important responsibility – and opportunity – in the days ahead to cast their history-making ballots for Vice President Harris, ensuring that she will be on the ballot in every state this November,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement earlier this week.

1 OF THESE 5 DEMOCRATS COULD BE HARRIS’ RUNNING MATE

The DNC reported that 3,923 delegates petitioned to put Harris on the ballot for the Democratic nomination, and that no other candidate met the party’s threshold of 300 delegate signatures to qualify for the ballot. 

While the official nomination vote by the delegates is being held remotely, the DNC says a ceremonial roll call will be held at the convention in Chicago. 

Former President Trump, speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

With the nomination of Harris not in doubt, speculation has soared in the past week over whom the vice president will choose as her running mate. The Harris campaign announced that the vice president and her soon-to-be-named running mate will embark on a swing through all seven key battleground states starting Tuesday in Pennsylvania.

The running mate announcement could potentially come as early as Monday evening.

That’s when it’s expected Harris will be announced as the nominee, following the 6 p.m. ET conclusion of the virtual roll call. DNC rules then allow for Harris to place the name of her running mate into nomination. 

According to the DNC, the convention chair would then declare that candidate to be the party’s vice presidential nominee.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

CBS will attempt to reinvent its evening newscast after Norah O’Donnell leaves the anchor desk following November’s presidential election.

The network announced Thursday that “CBS Evening News,” which still draws as many as 5 million viewers a night, will have a pair of anchors and draw on correspondents from the division’s other signature programs.

John Dickerson, political editor for CBS News, and Maurice DuBois, a local news anchor for the network’s New York station, WCBS, will helm the revamped telecast. The program will be moved back to its former home at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, after several years in Washington, where O’Donnell was based.

It’s the first time the network has tried a multi-anchor format since it paired Dan Rather with Connie Chung in the mid-1990s. ABC News also tried it in 2005 with Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff when it replaced the late Peter Jennings. Neither pairing improved the ratings of the programs.

This time around, the dual-anchor format is aiming to play up what CBS News executives are calling an “ensemble” approach that gives more on-air time to the network’s correspondents, including those on newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” which is the most-watched non-sports prime-time show most weeks. Margaret Brennan, the Washington-based moderator of “Face the Nation,” will also have a prominent role.

Bill Owens, who has run “60 Minutes” since 2019, will be supervising producer for “CBS Evening News” in addition to his current duties. Wendy McMahon, chief executive of CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures, said she is putting Owens in charge to assure the newscast can tap into the “the DNA of ’60 Minutes.’”

The newsmagazine has never had a single host, long relying on a cadre of correspondents.

“It should be more about the reporters than one person,” Owens said in an interview. “We are not trying to copy ’60 Minutes,’ but we want to bring in ’60 Minutes’ values. We don’t want to be following what everyone else is doing.”

The changes come after O’Donnell announced she will end her five-year stint in the anchor chair to take a new role as a senior correspondent. The program ranks third in the evening broadcast news ratings, behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt.”

“Face the Nation” moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan interviews Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in Eagle Pass, Tx. on Jan 3, 2024.

(Josh Huskin / CBS via Getty Images)

The network newscasts are no longer the agenda-setting platforms they were in the era of Walter Cronkite. But while the internet has upended the news business, the long-running programs remain appointment viewing for more than 17 million viewers a night, according to Nielsen data.

The audience is largely older, as younger viewers have migrated to streaming platforms.

CBS has tried a series of anchors over the years since Rather left the job in 2004 after 25 years, including a five-year stint by Katie Couric, who was lured away from NBC’s “Today.”

But the network has had trouble improving its competitive position going back to the mid-1990s, when it lost a number of affiliates that provided potent audience lead-ins with their local newscasts.

Owens said the format change is a way for “CBS Evening News” to differentiate itself from its competitors. The program will offer a lower story count with longer reports and debriefings from the news division’s top correspondents, he said.

The approach worked in Cronkite’s glory days and can be an alternative to today’s faster-paced, picture-driven network newscasts, Owens said.

Owens named “60 Minutes” veteran Guy Campanile to be executive producer of “CBS Evening News.” He will succeed Adam Verdugo, who has held the post since 2022.

Dickerson and DuBois will both be deployed for breaking news coverage on the network. They had a dry run together on July 13 when they covered the attempted assassination of former President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa.

For Dickerson, “CBS Evening News” will be the fourth significant assignment since he joined the network in 2009. Known as a thoughtful analyst, he is the son of Nancy Dickerson, one of the first prominent woman network correspondents in the 1960s.

A veteran Washington journalist, formerly with Time magazine, John Dickerson succeeded Bob Schieffer as moderator of “Face the Nation,” the network’s Sunday roundtable program.

Dickerson moved to a co-host role on “CBS This Morning” after Charlie Rose departed due to sexual harassment allegations in 2017. He lasted a year on the morning program before being moved off into a correspondent role.

Since 2022, he has anchored a nightly program, “The Daily Report,” on CBS News 24/7, the division’s streaming service. McMahon said Dickerson will continue to have a presence on the streaming platform. Separately, he co-hosts Slate’s “Political Gabfest” podcast.

DuBois, 58, has been an evening local anchor at WCBS in New York since 2004 and was previously a staple of the city’s NBC station.

While not widely known nationally, DuBois has served as an occasional fill-in host on “CBS Evening News,” which means he should be familiar to habitual viewers. He is known as a smooth on-air presenter with experience handling breaking news stories on the local stations.

“We’ve done our homework,” said McMahon. “We feel quite confident about his value to our audience.”

The rejiggering comes at a time of significant change at CBS. Budgets and salaries at CBS News are expected to undergo scrutiny when new ownership takes over parent company Paramount Global next year.

The company’s board and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone recently approved an $8-billion agreement to merge with David Ellison’s Skydance Media.