Will Donald Trump's 'go back' racial strategy backfire?
President Donald Trump isn't a racist. Just ask him. He'll tell you.
"I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world," he told reporters at the White House.
That's a statement that doesn't sound like it is to be taken seriously by anyone except perhaps his mostly white and very conservative support base as a signal that he's not about to be pushed around by what he calls "political correctness" -- and I call common courtesy.
Lately, as the president might say, "a lot of people have been talking about" whether Trump is racist or just playing one on TV. Allegations about Trump's racism, as a Google search will quickly reveal, go back to his early days as a rising New York real estate developer and ravenous publicity hound in the 1970s.
But his latest self-promotion as "least racist" of all of the planet's 7.5 billion people comes after a couple of weeks of tweets and sound bites that are loaded with racist tropes and stereotypes against certain lawmakers of color.
First he called on four progressive Democratic congresswomen of color to "go back" to the "totally broken and crime infested places" they came from. In fact, all four lawmakers are American citizens. Three were even born in the U.S., but Trump isn't about to let stubborn facts get in the way of a good rant.
More recently he targeted Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., calling him a "racist" and declaring the black congressman should return to take care of his Baltimore district, which Trump described as "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess."
That's another way of saying "Go back to where you came from," as if Cummings' job description includes pest control.
Trump sounds a lot more agitated by Cummings' real job as chair of the House Oversight Committee, which currently includes oversight of whether Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, illegally used private email and text message accounts for official purposes.
Since it is quite late in the game to try reaching for votes beyond his base, it is no big surprise that Trump might find it easier to light emotional fires under his old supporters than to try to win new ones.
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