At Trump's bully pulpit, it's 'us' vs. 'them,' with race often used as a device to polarize

Cathleen Decker

For much of his time as president, Donald Trump has been the bully at the bully pulpit, castigating targets foreign and domestic. Much of Trump’s bluster attempts to divide people into us-against-them, and it often has a single polarizing agent: race.

On Friday night, as he has many times before, Trump inflamed an almost exclusively white Southern audience against opponents who he said were trying to steal their heritage and attack their values. In that Alabama speech and on Saturday, he criticized African American athletes who had exercised free speech by declining to stand during the national anthem.

His racially oriented statements seem to reflect Trump’s embrace of the world as it was decades ago when power was largely held by men like him.

By the sheer bulk of his comments, Trump has reversed what had been a trend in politics over several decades: racial appeals have grown less overt, not more. Trump’s targets in the last week, by contrast, have included Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, unemployed NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and ESPN anchor Jemele Hill — all African Americans.

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http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-race-analysis-20170923-story.html