The message appears designed to galvanize supporters who have cheered what they see as a defiant stand against political correctness since the days when he kicked off his last presidential campaign in 2015 by denouncing, without evidence, Mexicans crossing the border as rapists. While he initially voiced concern over the killing of George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis this spring, which touched off nationwide protests, he has focused since then almost entirely on defending the police and condemning demonstrations during which there have been outbreaks of looting and violence.
He has described American cities as hotbeds of chaos, played to suburban housewives he casts as fearful of low-income people moving into their neighborhoods, sought to block a move backed by the Pentagon and Republican lawmakers to rename Army bases named for Confederate generals, criticized NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag, called Black Lives Matters a symbol of hate and vowed to strip funding from cities that do not take what he deems tough enough action against protesters.
In effect, he is reaching out to a subset of white voters who think that the news media and political elites see Trump supporters as inherently racist. Mr. Trump has repeatedly rejected the notion that America has a problem with systemic racial bias, dismissing instances of police brutality against Black Americans as the work of a few bad apples, in his words.
Trump is the most extreme, and he has done something that is beyond the bounds of anything we have seen, said Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Playing with racism is a dangerous game. Its not that you can do it a little bit or do it slyly or do it with a dog whistle. Its all dangerous, and its all potentially violent.
Public views of Mr. Trump flow through a racial prism. A poll by CBS News last week found that 66 percent of registered voters believed Mr. Trump favors white people, while 20 percent thought he favors Black people and 50 percent said he works against Black people. Among Black voters, 81 percent said he works against their interests.read more
More Than Ever, Trump Casts Himself as the Defender of White America
