Milbank: Long pattern firmly establishes Trump as a bigot

Since then, Trump led the “birther” movement challenging President Obama’s standing as a natural-born American; used various vulgar expressions to refer to women; spoke of Mexico sending rapists and other criminals across the border; called for rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants; mocked Asian accents; let stand a charge made in his presence that Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are a “problem” in America; embraced the notion of forcing Muslims to register in a database; falsely claimed that thousands of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey; tweeted bogus statistics asserting that most killings of whites are done by blacks; and publicly mocked the movements of New York Times journalist Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition limiting mobility.

He hasn’t gone after Jews recently, but his backers have, and Trump was uncharacteristically silent when prominent booster Ann Coulter, responding to Republican candidates’ support for Israel in a debate, tweeted: “How many f-ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?”

Though all Trump supporters surely aren’t racists or bigots, even a cursory examination of social media reveals that many are. His supporters tend to be white, less educated and middle-aged and older — those who are anxious and angry because they are losing ground as the American economy changes.

Careless or a racist?

This doesn’t mean Republicans or conservatives generally are bigoted. I wouldn’t label any other candidate in the GOP field that way (though Ben Carson’s remarks disqualifying Muslims from the presidency crossed the line). Although 32 percent of Republicans supported Trump in the latest Post poll, 86 percent of the overall American electorate hasn’t embraced him.

Some Trump defenders claim the candidate isn’t racist but simply “careless and undisciplined,” as John Hinderaker of the conservative website PowerLine put it. When I called in last week to a radio show Hinderaker hosted, he defended the treatment of a black man at Trump’s rally (“he was obviously being disruptive and he was a big, burly guy”), Trump’s tweet falsely blaming African-Americans for most killings of white people (“he just fell for some bad data”), and Trump’s embrace of a Muslim database (“that was brought up by a reporter”).

I argued that the large number of instances over an extended period add up to a pattern of bigotry. “We’d be at it a long time if we go back through history,” the host said.

Exactly. Shouldn’t Republicans take that time before they nominate a racist?