❝ It seems maddeningly repetitive to have to return time and again to the fact that Donald Trump is a racist, but it must be done. It must be done because it is a foundational character issue, one that supersedes and informs many others, in much the same way that his sexism and xenophobia does.

❝ On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Representative Elijah Cummings’s district “is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” a “very dangerous & filthy place” and “No human being would want to live there.” Cummings is black, as are most people in his district…

None of this is about crime as a discrete phenomenon, but rather about inextricably linking criminality to blackness. White supremacy isn’t necessarily about rendering white people as superhuman; it is just as often about rendering nonwhite people as subhuman. Either way the hierarchy is established, with whiteness assuming the superior position.

❝ It would be easy to prosecute a case against Trump on policy, but policies are not at the center of the creature. White supremacy, white nationalism and white patriarchy are.

The core of this man is racist in a way that is so fused to his sense of the world that he is incapable of seeing it as racist. It is instinctual for him to attack people of color. It is instinctual for him to denigrate the places they live and the countries to which they trace their heritage.

This commentary by Charles Blow in the NYTimes is detailed, profound, in addressing our fake president’s racism. I shan’t waste time and space trying to convince Trump’s supporters. They must be aware of racist content – and not decrying it, not rejecting the front man for this racist attack on America’s body politic – they are willing to be complicit.

The task is to explain this to that larger, sweeping body politic who wish to move forward from the stink of racist populism that now owns the Republican Party.