Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren suggested Saturday that tech companies have an obligation to ding tweets and other social media posts that call into question one of her presidential opponent’s American lineage.
“The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly. We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks,” Warren said in a tweet, following a post Donald Trump Jr. retweeted that asked if Sen. Kamala Harris is an “American black.”
The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly. We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 29, 2019
Harris, a California Democrat running for president, was born in Oakland, California, to a father from Jamaica and a mother from India. She often retells stories on the campaign trail about neighbors who wouldn’t let their children play with Harris because of her skin color.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) delivers listens as Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill September 4, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Tweets questioning Harris’s background started Thursday when black conservative Ali Alexander told his Twitter followers: “Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican.” Trump Jr. asked if the claim was accurate in a retweet, which was later deleted.
A spokesman for Trump Jr. told reporters he retweeted the post because he did not know Harris has Indian lineage. (RELATED: Elizabeth Warren Announces Plans To Break Up Facebook And Other Big Tech Firms)
Harris’s team denounced the comment.
“This is the same type of racist attacks his father used to attack Barack Obama. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now,” a representative for the California Democrat said.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, for her part is staking much of her campaign on throttling big tech companies, many of whom she argues act as monopolistic giants. She proposed in March breaking up companies like Facebook and Amazon. Warren is among 25 Democrats running for president in 2020.
Twitter did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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