Friends,Today’s question: Why did Trump on Wednesday post the video and transcript of a bigoted podcaster who used racist tropes against Chinese and Indian immigrants?In it, Michael Savage says:“A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet. … [T]here’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today. No, they’re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors. … We’ve gone from the melting pot to the chamber pot.”Savage also derides American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Cecillia Wang, a U.S. citizen who argued before the Supreme Court against Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship. Savage claims she is “pushing to destroy our national identity” and to “turn us into a colony of China.”Why did the president of the United States repost this excrement?The easiest answer is Trump wants to stir up America’s bigots to support his executive order against birthright citizenship, as the Supreme Court considers its constitutionality.But this can’t really be the reason. Not even the high court’s most dishonest and stupid rightwing justices would be swayed by messages coming from bigots stirred up by Trump’s repost.Could it be that Trump just wants to stir up racism and bigotry because he likes stirring it up? (Hours before reposting Savage’s sewage, Trump posted disparaging remarks about the Supreme Court, singling out Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown as a “Low IQ person,” a critique he often directs toward Brown and Black people.)But why would Trump want to stir up racism and bigotry right now? Doesn’t he have enough of a problem on his hands with his war in Iran going so badly that even his MAGA base is starting to unravel over it? (Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other MAGA luminaries have recently broken with Trump over the war.)Bingo. This is exactly why he wants to stir up racism and bigotry now.Trump knows that the way to keep his base together — to stop it unraveling over his war in Iran — is to stoke fear of “them.” His MAGA base may not like never-ending wars in the Middle East, but they dislike immigrants of color even more.This is Trump’s M.O., friends. Every time he needs to strengthen his base, he feeds it more bigotry.After the Justice Department released millions of pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents in January and February, including thousands of references to Trump — which shook the MAGA base — what did Trump do? He re-posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.Following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law on Nov. 19, 2025, what did Trump do? He described Somali immigrants living in the U.S. as “garbage” who “contribute nothing” to society.Every instance of Trump reposting bigoted filth follows some potential crack in the MAGA base. Trump’s tried-and-true method of recharging the base is to give them some more reasons to fear “them.”This was also the purpose of his executive order against birthright citizenship, which he signed on Jan. 20, 2025, his first day in office.Officially titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” its purpose wasn’t so much to get the Supreme Court to overturn birthright citizenship — highly unlikely, given the express language of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Its real purpose was to reassure his base, on his first day back in the White House, that he was on their side, and against “others,” whom he had spent almost his whole campaign demonizing.Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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