April 27, 2011: Progressive Columnist: Trump Using ‘Coded Racist Messages’ to Appeal to Far Right, Undermine Obama

Progressive columnist Ari Melber, writing for The Nation, states that billionaire television host, rumored presidential candidate, and “birther” enthusiast Donald Trump is using coded racist messages to attack President Obama. Melber cites recent Trump claims that Obama, whom he called a “terrible student,” could not have gotten into Ivy League universities unless it was somehow due to race (see April 26, 2011), and writes: “By charging that Obama was not admitted based on merit, Trump is suggesting that Obama was admitted because he is black.… He is blatantly attacking Obama’s teenage qualifications for college—a topic so obscure, it was a non-issue in Obama’s exhaustive, two-year-long presidential campaign.” Melber cites the underlying racism of the entire “birther” controversy (see January 24, 2007, September 22, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, November 10, 2008, September 14, 2009, March 2011, April 1, 2011, April 15, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011), and calls Trump’s attacks on Obama’s citizenship and college performance “a coded attack—aimed at the racists but clinging to deniability—[that] curdles into public, blatant racism.” “Birtherism,” Melber writes, “is a putatively non-racial, vaguely constitutional way to challenge the legitimacy of the first black president and appeal to racists without sounding officially racist. [Birther proponents] won’t go away. They are an audience-in-waiting for any amplified race-baiter.” [Nation, 4/27/2011] Melber is echoing sentiments expressed days before by CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria (see April 22, 2011).