It is not subtle

David Nakamura at the Post cautiously hints that Trump’s racist remarks to and about various black reporters over the past few days are…[whispers]…racist.

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Over the past several days, including before he left Washington for an Armistice Day ceremony here this weekend, Trump has launched personal attacks against a trio of black female journalists. He accused one of asking “a lot of stupid questions.” He demanded another “sit down” at a news conference and followed up later by calling her a “loser.” He lambasted a third for asking, in his view, a “racist question.”

Trump recently called Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D), a gubernatorial candidate in Florida, a “thief,” and declared that Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the state Senate in Georgia and the Democratic candidate for governor there, was “not qualified” for the job. A feature of his campaign rallies ahead of Tuesday’s elections was mocking Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a black lawmaker heavily critical of him, and calling her a “low-IQ person.”

The defense is that he insults everyone. Yes, but he uses particular tropes that are, indeed, racist.

Trump’s supporters reveled in the exchange, holding it up as an example of Trump showing his tormentors who is the boss.

“If you ask stupid questions, be prepared for @realDonaldTrump to call you out. #MAGA,” Harlan Z. Hill, a Republican operative and commentator, wrote on Twitter to his 171,000 followers, linking to a video clip of the exchange. The tweet had racked up more than 1,800 retweets and 5,000 “likes” within a few hours.

Because this is where Trump has taken us.

Eddie Glaude Jr., chairman of the African American studies department at Princeton University, said Trump’s language was not a dog whistle because “it is not subtle.” He compared Trump’s attacks on the intelligence of black public figures to “The Bell Curve,” a widely disparaged 1994 book that connected intelligence to race.

“He does it over and over again,” Glaude said. “It’s important for us not just to reduce it to Trump just being transactional and understand this as a central part of who he is.”

And we do need to document it in order to isolate it and resist it.

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