Donald Trump lashes out at perceived foes on a daily basis, but he doesn’t generally refer to opponents as “racists.” As the former president told the Christian Broadcasting Network last year, “Whenever you hear that term, that means you’re winning because what they’re doing is, that’s their last card.”
In other words, as the Republican described it, referring to a political adversary as a “racist” is a desperation move, used only as a last resort when all other forms of criticism have failed.
To the extent that reality has any role in this debate, the argument was absurd: People, including Trump, are often called racists as a result of actual examples of overt and indefensible racism.
But that was nevertheless Trump’s pitch: When we hear someone use the term “racist,” he said, that necessarily means the target of the label is “winning.”
With this in mind, the former president turned to his social media platform on Friday night to whine about the New York prosecutor investigating his hush money scandal:
“The Racist Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the U.S., and doing NOTHING about it, is being pushed relentlessly by the Radical Left Democrats, the Fake News Media, and the Department of ‘Injustice,’ to bring charges against me for the now ancient ‘no affair’ story of Stormy ‘Horseface’ Danials [sic], where there is no crime and charges have NEVER been brought on such a case before. In the meantime, Hunter & Joe Biden skate!”
Shortly before midnight on Friday night, he published a similar message attacking Bragg, once again calling him a “racist.”
There’s no point in refuting each of Trump’s specific claims — it’s well-tread ground — but it was of interest to see the Republican lash out at the Manhattan district attorney, who is a Black man, as a “racist.”
Yesterday, the former president wrote a related missive, but this time he referred to Fulton County’s Fani Willis, who is a Black woman, as the “Racist District Attorney.”
It comes less than a year after Trump lashed out at Letitia James, who is also a Black woman, as “the racist Attorney General of New York State.” In case this isn’t already obvious, Trump has never even tried to support these accusations with evidence. He has simply asserted that Bragg, Willis and James are “racists” — because he says so. Note, there are other prosecutors who’ve investigated, and continue to investigate, the former president’s alleged misdeeds. Names such as Robert Mueller and Jack Smith are no doubt familiar to those who’ve followed Trump’s scandals in recent years. But while he has plenty to say about them — Smith was recently labeled a “mad dog psycho” — Trump has never accused them of being “racist.” The former president reserves that label for Black prosecutors investigating his alleged wrongdoing. That’s quite a coincidence.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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