Trump’s racist tweet will forever haunt him

"These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
- President Trump, responding to pubic disorder after George
Floyd shooting

A sizable portion of Trump’s base is racist and xenophobic. He’s been playing them his entire life on the public stage. His ascension to the presidency would have been impossible without them. Always politically ambitious, Trump gained a following thirty-one years ago with his front page pitch to have the Central Park Jogger suspects executed. He never retracted that vicious charge when the suspects were exonerated. Never has, never will.

He studied for the presidency at the feet of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who dispensed subtle dog whistles to the base they needed to succeed. Nixon crafted the ‘Southern Strategy in 1968 to funnel white anger over civil rights gains to capture the South…and the White House. Reagan expanded on that playbook, launching his successful 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, MS, site of the 1964 triple Freedom Summer killings, preaching ‘states rights’ to the white Southern majority who absorbed his implicit message of solidarity. Both preached ‘law and order’ without a hint of support or sympathy to the folks left out of that message.

Trump dutifully walked back his dog whistle tweet, saying he didn’t mean it to support shooting down violent protesters; didn’t even know the racist history of his call to lethal violence. But his initial statement recalls his July, 2017, campaign rally before NY police, calling on them to 'not be so nice' to suspects in their charge. Did Derek Chauvin absorb that Trump lesson?

Trump dishonors the presidency and the American people every day in many ways. His response to the George Floyd killing may be his worst.