Trump escalates his racist attacks on Black Americans

Trump escalates his racist attacks on Black Americans
Failure to connect his comments to our worsening democratic crisis is an act of complicity

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published August 9, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump is not a subtle man. Given his core nature and personality, Trump’s attacks on prominent Black Americans have recently become even more explicit and direct.

First, he accused former President Barack Obama of “treasonous” behavior for launching an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But that was not the end of it. On Monday, following a criminal referral from Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered federal prosecutors to open a grand jury investigation into the baseless accusations. Multiple investigations, including two led by Republicans, and other reporting have repeatedly shown that Russia did, in fact, seek to meddle in the election in favor of Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by launching a social media disinformation campaign using Russian bot farms, and by hacking the Clinton campaign’s emails.

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Last week, Trump targeted Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Al Sharpton and others with claims they were part of a conspiracy in which they were paid to endorse his rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election. “IT’S NOT LEGAL!” he posted on Truth Social. “For these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’ this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system.” Trump said he would soon “call for a major investigation.”

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But the president still was not finished with his bigoted provocations. On Tuesday, he escalated his racist appeals, telling CNBC in a phone interview that “inner city” people — a not-so-subtle code for Black Americans — are lazy. “Illegal aliens” — meaning Hispanics and Latinos — are strong and have a natural talent for physical labor, he said. “People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’re just not doing that work, and they’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried, they don’t do it…These people do it naturally, naturally.”

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The mainstream media’s failure to consistently connect Trump’s racism and authoritarianism to the nation’s worsening democratic crisis is not a mere “failure of imagination.” It is an act of complicity that further normalizes racism and authoritarianism in the Age of Trump. Further, as media critics like Dan Froomkin and Mark Jacob have argued, it is actually a willful refusal to understand how racism and authoritarianism intersect and amplify the other’s power to erode human freedom, dignity, agency and flourishing across racial lines. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/09/trump-escalates-his-racist-attacks-on-black-americans/