Analyst says Trump tried to prove he isn't racist — and it backfired spectacularly

Former President Donald Trump meant something very specific — and dark — when he praised Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a prominent Black Republican, at a recent Pennsylvania rally by saying, “That one is smart. You have smart ones and then you have some that aren’t quite so good,” wrote Chauncey DeVega for an analysis in Salon published Friday.

This sort of language is "quite familiar" to Black Americans, wrote DeVega about the speech, which Trump gave on Saturday. "It is a version of such white racist language and logic as 'you are not like the other ones' or 'you are so articulate.'

"The underlying assumption is that Black people as a group are stupid, dumb, unintelligent, inherently childlike and primitive, possess 'bad culture' and in other ways are inferior to white people."

When Trump says things like this, it's intended to shield him from allegations of racism, wrote DeVega, but outside of his circle of existing supporters, it actually does the opposite. "It is a version of the 'my best Black (or brown) friend' defense that many white people use when confronted by their racist behavior. In reality, such praise, especially from someone like Trump who is generally of poor character and has repeatedly shown himself to be a racist and a white supremacist, is an insult and act of gross condescension towards any self-respecting Black person," and best thought of as "disingenuous poison."

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All of this comes after Trump triggered outrage for reviving a version of his "Birther" strategy during a Q&A with the National Association of Black Journalists, questioning Vice President Kamala Harris' racial identity.

It also comes after Trump has repeatedly tried to make the same sorts of "good" and "bad" distinction about Jewish people, proclaiming them disloyal if they aren't on board with his policy on Israel and even suggesting Jews who vote for Democrats "should have their head examined."

What all this means, concluded DeVega, is that the election this year is a "referendum on our national character," and that Harris' multiracial background "is a powerful weapon that can be used to beat back the new Jim and Jane Crow apartheid and an attempt to bring American back to the worst part of its history that Trump and his neofascist MAGA movement represent."