On Twitter, Trump accuses blacks of racism three times as often as whites
By
Christopher Ingraham August 14 at 4:44 PM
a White House speech on Monday President Donald Trump denounced racism as "evil" after facing two days of bipartisan criticism for declining to specifically condemn Nazis and white supremacists following a violent rally Charlottesville, Virginia.
After a
non-specific response on Saturday decrying the violence exhibited on "many sides," on Monday he addressed the problem head on: "Racism is evil," he said, "and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to all that we hold dear as Americans."
Trump's initial hesitancy to call out white racism did not go unnoticed, and it has similarities with a longstanding trend on Trump's twitter account: In his eight years on Twitter, Trump has been far more likely to accuse African Americans of racism than white people.
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Trump has used the word "racist" or "racism" at least 56 times on Twitter, according to the
Trump Twitter Archive, a website that tracks and archives all the President's tweets. In two-thirds of those Tweets, Trump levied accusations of racism at individuals or groups of people. And those accusations followed a very clear pattern: Trump has directed accusations of racism toward black people three times as often as he's done so against whites.
Most of Trump's allegations of racism have been directed against just two people. One of them is former MSNBC host Touré, who he accused of being a racist no fewer than ten times in the course of a long-running feud lasting from October 2012 and September 2013. Below, a characteristic tweet:
That feud was evidently sparked, in part, by
comments Toure made on Twitter about Trump's bankruptcies.
Similarly, in August of 2013 Trump sent six tweets accusing HBO Real Sports host Bryant Gumbel of being a racist. As with Touré, Trump characterized Gumbel as a "dope" and "dumb." The accusations may have been linked to
comments Gumbel made about Trump's golf courses.
Trump has also tweeted out accusations of racism against talk show host Tavis Smiley ("
a hater & racist") and former President Barack Obama ("
a total racist?"). In 2012, noting strong African-American support for the former president, Trump asked "
is that racism?"
Trump has also called the film Django Unchained, about a freed slave, "
the most racist movie I have ever seen." He similarly characterized the title of the sitcom Black-ish, about an upper middle-class black family, as "
racism at highest level?"
Conversely, Trump has sent a total of seven tweets accusing white individuals of racism. They include Hillary Clinton ("
needs to address the racist undertones of her 2008 campaign"), Elizabeth Warren ("
very racist!") and David Letterman ("
must apologize for his racist comment").
Trump's also used the words "racist" or "racism" in a number of other tweets that discuss the concept but don't necessarily accuse anyone of racism. For instance:
Half of those 18 tweets, however, contain an explicit or implicit denial that Trump himself is racist. "Don King, and so many other African Americans who know me well and endorsed me, would not have done so if they thought I was a racist,"
Trump said in June of 2016. A number of other tweets thank specific individuals, like
Al Sharpton,
David Letterman, and
former CNBC host Donny Deutsch for apologizing for calling Trump racist.
Trump's deployment of the race card primarily against black Americans may seem odd. African Americans have borne the brunt of American racism for centuries, from slavery through Jim Crow and segregation and into modern-day prejudices that are
less explicit, but
no less corrosive.
But Trump's use of words like "racist" and "racism" is perhaps best understood in the context of a modern conservative movement that has come to believe,
against all evidence, that whites
face more discrimination than blacks. By using racial language primarily as a cudgel against his non-white critics, Trump has given validation to that belief.
"Isn't it intetesting [sic] that anybody who attacks President Obama is considered a racist by the real racists out there," Trump
remarked in 2013. Trump doesn't specify who the "real racists" are.