Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists.
The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs as some of his supporters post racist screeds about the same targets.
The rhetoric is a reminder of Trump’s tendency to use coded racial messaging as a signal to supporters, an approach he has deployed over several decades as he evolved from a New York City real estate tycoon to a reality television star and, eventually, the president. Even if he doesn’t explicitly employ racial slurs, his language recalls America’s history of portraying Black people as not fully human.
“He’s taking that historical racialized language that was offensive and insulting, and the subordinating of Black persons, applying it in a contemporary space and really bubbling up that history,” said Bev-Freda Jackson, a professor in the school of public affairs at American University.
While this is a well-worn strategy for Trump, his latest comments come at a particularly sensitive moment. On a personal level, a bond agreement signed on Monday by Trump’s lawyers and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis imposes restrictions on his communications, including those issued through social media. And more broadly, experts worry Trump’s broadsides will worsen online vitriol and inspire violence.
“It makes the internet a more dangerous place,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “It just takes one angry person with a gun to do something terrible. And that’s frankly the kind of violence I’m the most worried about.”
Recent incidents underscore those concerns: Threats toward people involved in Trump’s cases have factored into an arrest in Texas and an FBI killing in Utah.
