James "JT" Troutman wrote me a while back to ask…
I'm puzzled by your insistence that the president is not a racist. It seems to me that if he talks like one, and acts like one, and hangs around with racists, and revels in their adulation, then what is one to conclude? And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that you need to declare him a racist. I'm just wondering why you feel it necessary to keep suggesting that he isn't.
Well, certain recent utterings of Mr. Trump have me puzzled a bit by my insistence that he's not a racist…and it's not so much an insistence as a current opinion, subject to ongoing revision. I agree with you that there's a fine line between being a racist and talking like one. In many senses, it's the same thing…but I find it useful to take note of that fine line.
For example, I've testified a few times as an expert witness in lawsuits, which means I've been questioned, sometimes almost maniacally, by attorneys who are relentless about denying reality that does not favor their client. It helps me to remember that most of them do not really believe the position they advocate; that if the other side was paying them $300-an-hour or $800-an-hour — and I was once run through a wringer by a $1000-an-hour guy who kept mentioning his hourly rate — they'd be selling fiercely for the other side. One guy who spent an awful lot of the judge's time trying to argue that I was not an expert witness later, for another client on another case, tried to hire me as his expert witness.
Trump strikes me as a guy who just says whatever works for him at the moment. He's really good at denying he said what he said last February and pretty good at getting away with it, at least with his base. That base is the reason he has his current position and if it wants white resentment and hostility to immigrants, that's what he's going to give them. He doesn't strike me as a guy who gives a damn one way or another about anyone of any color except according to one criteria: Are they of immediate use to the glory and/or wealth of Donald Trump? He fans the fires of racism not because he feels them in his soul. The guy doesn't have a soul. He just knows what's of benefit to him at the moment.
If you want to call that racism, I wouldn't waste a lot of breath arguing with you. But isn't there a microscopic speck of difference between a politician who honestly believes abortion is murder and one who says that but says that only because he's courting the votes and support of those believe that? Trump reminds me of a man I once knew of whom a mutual acquaintance said, "He doesn't hate any race or religion. He just hates anyone who isn't him!"