John Jefferson
Wrestler Hulk Hogan has been filmed joking to a crowd about “body slamming” Kamala Harris and questioning her racial identity.
While the Democratic National Convention was in full swing in Chicago, Hogan was at an event in Medina, Ohio, promoting his new beverage, Real American Beer, when the Donald Trump supporter asked the crowd if he should “body slam Kamala Harris”.
Referencing one of his famed wrestling moves, in a video obtained by TMZ, Hogan asked the rowdy crowd: “Do you want me to drop the leg on Kamala…Do you want me to body slam Kamala Harris?”
He asked the crowd: “Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?”
Hogan then used a stereotypical trope associated with Indigenous Americans.
Perhaps realizing he had crossed a line, Hogan appeared to blame alcohol for his behavior.
“I’m gonna get heat for that one, brother…that was not me, that was the beers talking,” he said.
Harris is both the first Black and Asian-American vice president, with her father coming from Jamaica and her mother being Indian.
The Independent has contacted Hogan’s representatives, the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign for comment.
It is not the first time Hogan has been caught up in controversy over his racist remarks. In 2015 he was suspended from WWE for three years after a recording surfaced of him going on a racist rant, using the n-word repeatedly when discussing his daughter Brooke’s love life. Brooke later defended her father.
Apologizing at the time, he told People: “Eight years ago I used offensive language during a conversation. It was unacceptable for me to have used that offensive language; there is no excuse for it; and I apologize for having done it.”
Hogan’s latest comments about Harris come after he gave a speech at the Republican National Convention last month where he pledged his support to Trump.
“Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother,” he said, while bizarrely ripping off his shirt.
Hogan isn’t the only conservative figure who has attacked Harris’s racial identity in the weeks since she launched her presidential campaign. Trump sparked fury last month where he falsely claimed the vice president “happened to turn Black” only recently.
In a heated question-and-answer session with Black journalists in Chicago, he said: “I didn’t know she was Black…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? … I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
The comments instantly prompted a backlash with Michael Tyler, Harris for President’s communications director, saying at the time: “Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”
Despite his comments, Trump has tried to claim he is “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln”.
Read the full article here