Trump just rage-tweeted about a prominent African-American again

Let’s be clear about this: President Donald Trump regularly goes out of his way to attack prominent African-Americans not just to “stoke the culture wars,” as this euphemism often has it – but, more precisely, to stoke the sense among many of his supporters that the system is unfairly rigged on behalf of minorities, and that he’s here to put things right.

Wednesday, Trump once again tweeted angrily about LaVar Ball, the father of a UCLA basketball player who, along with two others, had been released by China after getting arrested for shoplifting. But what’s particularly noteworthy is that only minutes later Trump then tweeted about kneeling football players. What’s the connection there? Here’s Trump’s tweetstorm:

“It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!

“The NFL is now thinking about a new idea – keeping teams in the Locker Room during the National Anthem next season. That’s almost as bad as kneeling! When will the highly paid Commissioner finally get tough and smart? This issue is killing your league!”

Ball had previously refused to thank Trump, and the president had responded by tweeting that “I should have left them in jail!” Wednesday’s tweets go further, suggesting Ball was insufficiently thankful to Trump personally for actions that are expected of U.S. presidential administrations.

The immediate segue to kneeling football players is suggestive, and reminds us that we’re seeing a pattern in Trump’s public flaying of prominent African-Americans. It is true that in some of these cases, Trump was attacked or at least questioned first. But it’s hard to avoid noticing a gratuitously ugly pattern in Trump’s responses, in which Trump vaguely suggests either that his targets are getting above their station, or that they’re asking for too much and are insufficiently thankful for all that has been done for them.

Kneeling football players are protesting structural racism, hideously unfair racist prison sentencing disparities, and police brutality – i.e., profound injustices that our society inflicts on countless African-Americans who have not enjoyed the success that star black athletes have, sometimes to the point of having lost large chunks of their lives to imprisonment or having been wrongfully killed in their youth. But Trump has regularly depicted the players as “disrespectful,” as if questioning this country’s continued deeply ingrained injustices is itself an act of impudence. He has repeatedly labeled the players “privileged,” as if they’ve got no business complaining or that their achievements are vaguely suspect.

When Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida relayed that Trump had offended one of her constituents, a war widow, Trump accused her of “secretly” listening in on the call, as if she had rigged the game for self-promotional purposes, rendering him the aggrieved party. White House chief of staff John Kelly called her an “empty barrel” (a showboat and a hot dog), and put her in her place by accusing her of disrespecting the military. Kelly also falsely accused her of rigging a federal kickback to her district by calling up President Obama (hint, hint). Kelly refused to apologize for this lie, because the details were irrelevant to the larger truism that the impudent, disrespectful loudmouth had actually gotten the appropriate smackdown that was coming to her.

Now LaVar Ball is an “ungrateful fool,” as if Ball has benefited from Trump’s benevolence – rather than from his administration’s institutional responsibility – without showing sufficient gratitude for it.

Writing in The Atlantic this week, Adam Serwer suggested that Trump’s frequent race baiting has two crucial components. First, there’s the ongoing suggestion that minorities enjoy various special privileges that unfairly rig the game against struggling white people, which Trump will reverse with justifiably discriminatory policies. (Polling has suggested many Trump voters did believe that such special privileges were harming whites.) Second, there’s the crucial ingredient of deniability – the simultaneous notion that Trump is entirely innocent of any racially discriminatory motives, and even that the very suggestion otherwise constitutes another injustice heaped upon Trump and his supporters.

Trump once again attacked a prominent African-American on Wednesday. But, hey, the guy had it coming. Also, it would be deeply unfair to Trump to suggest that this constitutes a pattern of race-baiting on his part, and deeply unfair to his supporters to suggest that such a pattern might be designed to resonate with some of them, if that pattern existed at all, which it doesn’t.

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 1:07 PM with the headline "Trump just rage-tweeted about a prominent African-American again."