After tomorrow, any pretense Newt Gingrich has of running for president will be pretty much laughable. Perhaps he’s already making the transition back to his old game of attracting attention by lending his fading intellectual credibility to outright bigotry. Check out this special moment from the Louisiana campaign trail, reported by Politico‘s Ginger Gibson:

Asked about polls suggesting many in the public continue to think Obama is a Muslim, Gingrich said in Louisiana that he takes Obama “at his word” that he believes in Christianity.

Then he launched into a riff on how Obama’s policies are excessively sensitive to non-Christian, non-Jewish faiths, suggesting it could raise doubts for some about where the president’s impulses come from.

“Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he’s Muslim]?” Gingrich said. “You have to ask, why would they believe that? It’s not cause they’re stupid. It’s because they watch the kind of things I just described to you.”

Guess Obama’s like Trayvon Martin. If you don’t want to get shot, don’t wear a hoodie, right?

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Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.