“Nobody understands a word this guy is saying” was President Donald Trump’s racist reaction on his Truth Social feed to Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language Super Bowl halftime performance. The comment was a dehumanizing insult to millions of somebodies: 52 million Spanish speakers—both native and non-native bilingual—in the United States and 636 million worldwide.
If you expected Trump would be more restrained after last week’s intra-party backlash led him to delete his racist post depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, well, what were you thinking? Trump is a racist, incorrigibly so. And one can’t claim his racist comments shouldn’t be taken literally since he also implements racist policies.
Granted, if Trump’s racist commentary were a fatal political problem, he never would have been elected president once, let alone twice. His ability to win a second term with increased support among voters of color, mere days after praising a rally as a “lovefest” in which a warmup comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”—just one of many racist transgressions over the last several years—prompted reassessments about the politics of race.
Many Democrats understandably concluded that past assumptions about what would impress Black and Latino voters were superficial. Progressive positions on immigration and combating discrimination were insufficient, especially in the wake of economic frustration. Conversely, many Republicans concluded they could embrace mass deportations and take a hard line against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies without fearing a sharp loss of support among nonwhite voters.
But the Republican calculation was missing the importance of delivering economic improvement.
The biggest colorblind conclusion from the 2024 election is that most voters, regardless of race, care primarily about making ends meet. Such voters can conclude: If Democrats couldn’t keep inflation down, then maybe give a Republican a chance, even if that Republican says racist things. Voters could further rationalize that Trump couldn’t be that racist, and that his promised deportations wouldn’t affect neighbors, friends, and family.
Now that Trump has failed to deliver the economy he promised, while letting immigration agents run wild, he is hemorrhaging support across racial lines. In turn, Democrats reasonably want to prioritize an “affordability” agenda to win voters back. But that can be pursued while calling out Trump’s racism, which goes well beyond offensive comments to infect his policy choices.
Let’s just look at some of the lowlights of the past year.
One of Trump’s first executive orders upon re-entering the Oval Office was indefinitely suspending all refugee admission, and declaring that any future policy would “only [accept] those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.” Three weeks later, another executive order made an exception for white South Africans known as Afrikaners. In May, Trump falsely accused the Black-led South African government of committing “genocide,” claiming “white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.” In October, Trump established a new cap of 7,500 refugees (down from 125,000 under the Joe Biden administration), and “the admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa.” This racist policy implicitly assumes that white South Africans are the only identifiable group “who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.” The low cap also has negative consequences for cities, like Twin Falls, Idaho, with businesses that have become reliant on refugees for their workforce.
In December, Trump’s chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission posted a video advertisement on X in which she said, “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the EEOC as soon as possible.” Meanwhile, Trump’s EEOC threw out all previously pending cases alleging not necessarily intentional but impactful race and sex discrimination. And last week, the EEOC launched a first-of-its-kind investigation into Nike, accusing the iconic sportswear company of discriminating against whites because of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies.
That makes sense when you look at Trump’s lack of interest in racial diversity when staffing his administration and the judiciary, as about 90 percent of his nominees for each have been white. Not one of Trump’s judges this term has been an African-American woman.
The Supreme Court in the fall greenlighted the use of racial profiling by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when interrogating and detaining people. And we have anecdotal evidence—from Minneapolis police officers, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and others around the country—that ICE has taken advantage.
And why wouldn’t they when President Trump says things like Somalis are “garbage” and “we don’t want them in our country.” In a December speech to supporters in Pennsylvania, Trump recounted a 2018 meeting with senators: “We had a meeting. And I say: Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden. Just a few, let us have a few. From Denmark, do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people, do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia. Places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
And during his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump counseled the assembled world leaders, “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own.”
One answer to the perennial question “What does Trump really believe?” is “Racism.” He has let that racism dictate his administration’s priorities. He has gone out of his way to implement policies designed to divide, at the expense of economic prosperity for all. Democrats are well-positioned to advance that argument come this fall. And Republicans who know they need a diverse coalition to keep the White House and the Senate should begin distancing themselves from Trump’s racist legacy.
