Even before Wednesday morning, Trump’s blows to Lynch and Ball fit into an ongoing pattern of the president’s use of sports and the behavior of athletes of color as a battlefield for a culture war waged on behalf of his supporters. In Trump’s envisioning, black athletes are showing contempt for the country through displays of blatant disrespect and lack of explicit gratitude, a framing that his critics have called out for being little more than a thinly veiled racial dog whistle, one that is rooted in Trump’s troubled history on racial issues.
Understand, it's not just that Trump criticizes black athletes. Remember, he's refused to condemn folks like David Duke or the Charlottesville white supremacist marchers — or done so in a belated, churlish, "fine folks on both sides" way. The combination of who he criticizes and who he refuses to criticize seem pretty telling. All the excuse-making by his conservative media allies can't really cover that up.
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