Donald Trump is back to trying to divide people, this time by attacking professional athletes who protest racism during playing of the national anthem.
Faced with the failure of yet another attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the divider-in-chief used a speech at a campaign rally on Friday in Alabama to ridicule African-American athletes.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!’” Trump told the crowd, referring to players who kneel in protest, a gesture started last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
“When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they’re playing our great national anthem,” added Trump, speaking about black athletes to an overwhelmingly white crowd. In Alabama.
The president later disinvited the championship Golden State Warriors from the White House after opposition to him by Stephen Curry, their star player. The comments come roughly a month after Trump refused to criticize white supremacists and fascists who rallied in Charlottesville.
“The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling,” Leland Melvin, a retired NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver who is African-American, writes in a letter to the president. “Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially?”
For decades, Trump has preferred division and demagoguery. The president is the same person who, as David Remnick noted on Saturday, began his career in real estate with a string of discriminatory housing practices and his career in politics with a racist questioning of Barack Obama’s birthplace.
It’s also the same person who in 1989 called for the execution of group of teenagers who were convicted – only to be exonerated – in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park.
Trump’s equivocation over racism in August led a series of business leaders to abandon him. On Saturday, NFL owners – a group not usually prone to protest – criticized the president for sowing divisiveness.
“The callous and offensive comments made by the president are contradictory to what this great country stands for,” said Jed York, the 49ers chief executive.
“Our country needs unifying leadership right now, not more divisiveness,” said Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins.
The division that Trump practices follows a pattern. The less he succeeds at changing laws – he has proved unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act, abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement, build a wall along the border with Mexico or deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; all of which he pledged to do – the more he seeks to divide the country.
The divisiveness Trump sows highlights a desperation to hold a base of supporters who actually agree with him. That won’t be enough to remain president.
As Nate Silver has documented, the announcement by former FBI Director James Comey 11 days before the election that he needed to further examine Hillary Clinton’s emails probably cost her the election by erasing her lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.
Trump knows this, too. One way or another, he will struggle to stay in office.
The question now is how soon do Republicans in Congress abandon Trump for Mike Pence, who, were he to become president in the event of impeachment or resignation of Trump, would still assure the GOP and its supporters the tax cuts they covet.
Trump may have won the election, but he has lost the country. As Melvin advises him, “If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try.”