President Trump is being racist again.
In a tweet this morning, the self-proclaimed “least racist person” on the planet attacked Bubba Wallace, the only full-time Black driver in NASCAR’s top racing series, and criticized the sport’s decision to ban the Confederate flag.
In the tweet, Trump asked if Wallace has apologized to “all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?”
The “thing” Trump is referring to is the noose found in Wallace’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama last month.
NASCAR determined that the noose was used as a pull rope for a garage door and had been there for months, meaning it wasn’t an attempt to target Wallace.
There’s no truth to Trump’s implication that Wallace staged the incident, though.
At the end of his tweet, Trump threw in a defense of the Confederate battle flag, which NASCAR banned in early June after Wallace publicly called for the move to be made.
Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020
NASCAR driver Tyler Reddick fireed back at Trump, saying: “We don’t need an apology. We did what was right and we will do just fine without your support.
Trump’s tweet appears to be part of a broader strategy borne of Trump’s apparent belief that his only path to victory in November is ramping up his racism.
He’s recently defended Confederate monuments and military bases named for confederate leaders, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” and said he may kill a policy meant to reduce racial segregation in housing.
Trump woke up this morning to learn his approval rating in the non-partisan Gallup survey is down to 38 percent.
More troubling for the president is that, for the first time, more men rate him unfavorably to favorable.
Trump cannot win without white men strongly backing his reelection.
Thus why more racist and sexiest rhetoric is expected over the next four months until the election.
The controversy over symbols of the Confederacy came amid a national reckoning over race and police brutality in the wake of the deaths of Floyd and other Black people by police.
Activists have called for states and localities to remove public statues of historical figures they view as problematic.
Some statues have been defaced or torn down by protesters.
Trump has been a vocal critic of the movement, decrying “anarchists” who harm monuments and threatening jail time for those who participate.
In his Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota over the weekend, Trump denounced what he described as a “left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
“To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol and memory of our national heritage,” Trump said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2020 election, took a more nuanced view, saying at a recent press conference that he believes Confederate monuments could be moved to museums.
The debate over the flag in particular has not been limited to NASCAR.
Mississippi’s Republican governor last week signed into law the decision to change the state’s flag, which bears the “stars and bars” design of the Confederate flag.