Memo to President Trump’s backers: If you want people to stop calling you racist, stop saying and doing racist things. And stop excusing racist posts and rants by leading voices in the MAGA media.

When Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson recently ranked among the top five on Spotify’s list of top trending podcasts, it screamed out that racism and antisemitism are not a problem for their MAGA-world fan base.

That is one reason why 60 percent of Americans told a PPRI poll this month the “state of race relations in the U.S. has mostly changed for the worse” since the start of the year and Trump’s return to Washington.

Here’s what baffles me about the damage being done to race relations. 

As a Black guy with lots of Republican friends and even Republicans in my family, I notice that rising racism under Trump is no big deal for 48 percent of White Americans who still hold a favorable view of him, according to the PPRI poll. 

As comedian Bill Maher puts it, “To be a Republican, we certainly shouldn’t say they are all racist. But if you’re racist, you probably are a Republican.”

Good logic that is backed up by recent text messages among Trump Republicans, revealing blatant racism. According to Politico, members of the group referred to Black people as “monkeys” and “watermelon people.” These Republicans “lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery,”

© The Hill