As possibly the longest-standing public critics of Donald Trump’s dangerous leadership tactics, we have an important warning being missed by the outrage over his racial taunts. Some may wince over the President’s unjustifiable posting of an overtly racist AI-generated video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes on Truth Social—during Black History Month, no less—as a shameful racist blunder in a late-night rage. Unconvincingly, the White House's initial defensive spin blamed the racist post on an unnamed, unaccountable "staffer," fiddling with Trump’s own social media account at the exact same minute Trump was also on his own account.

Sure, the demeaning bigotry cannot be ignored, and the post was just after armed federal agents burst into a hotel room to arrest the unarmed Black journalist Don Lemon, and the National Park Service removed a slavery exhibit in Philadelphia. The pattern is stark, including the false birtherism attacks on President Obama, his references to African nations as “s-hole” countries, the new barriers on Black African visas, and false defamatory campaign allegations that Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors’ pets, and it is not a coincidence that the Administration is seizing the 2020 Georgia ballots of largely Black voting precincts.

Read more: Trump’s Twitter Feed Has Been a Defining Feature of His Presidency. Here’s Why That Won’t Change

These reflexes are not simply employing sickening subtle racial dog whistles in cynically coded language, but shouting overtly bigoted tropes at full blast. Yet this post is also emblematic of something beyond racism. It reveals an ever-larger Trumpian technique, which is the........

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