The Very White House

The Trump administration is, at its core, a white nationalist project.

The president's personal racism, of course, has always been crystal clear, not just from the start of his political career but from the much older start of his public career. His first mention in The New York Times came when he was sued in 1973 by the Nixon administration for violating the Fair Housing Act. He regularly made the news for similarly racist comments and acts throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

For those who were even loosely familiar with the man's long history of racist rabble-rousing, it came as no surprise that Trump established a real foothold in the Republican Party by pushing the racist "birther" conspiracy theory about the first African American president, Barack Obama. He then launched a presidential campaign with a speech filled with racist comments about Mexican immigrants to the U.S.

And on and on and on.

Despite all of this evidence, the news media during Trump's first term generally refused to call Trump and his administration "racist." Mainstream media outlets bent over backwards to avoid naming what we could all see with our own eyes, giving him the benefit of the doubt on several occasions and routinely using awkward terms – "racially charged" or "racially tinged" or "racially loaded" – in an effort to avoid calling him "racist."

Apparently, in the world of corporate media, calling someone a racist when they are clearly being racist, saying racist things and doing racist deeds is worse than their actually being racist. This problem came into clearest view in 2019, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flatly noted that there was "no question" that Trump was racist, CNN's Anderson Cooper seemed stunned that someone had finally and flatly acknowledged the obvious truth: "How can you say that?!"

But now, in Trump's second term, I doubt there's anyone outside of Trump's White House and the assorted media lapdogs who constitute the Trump Extended Cinematic Universe who would challenge an observation that this administration is, at its heart, deeply racist.

The 2024 Trump campaign was somehow even more deeply driven by racism than the 2016 or 2020 efforts.

Trump's running mate on this third try was Senator J.D. Vance, a man who once warned that Trump would be "America's Hitler" before he decided that wasn't such a bad thing. He rationalized that "some people who voted for Trump were racists" and decided he too could profit by shamelessly pandering to their prejudicesThe sweatily opportunistic climber rushed to embrace Trump's racism, running interference when Trump called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage," spreading lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, and, most dangerously, embracing the white supremacist "great replacement theory" that has been directly responsible for several mass shootings of racial and religious minorities.

While this embrace of white nationalism was obvious on the campaign trail, many pundits and even many of Trump's own voters expected him to become more moderate once he was back in office. To the contrary, he has gone well beyond the racism of his first term and his most recent campaign, letting the outspoken racist (and notable Duke University alumnus) Stephen Miller wield incredible influence over domestic policies.

Trump had campaigned on a promise to enforce immigration law and to deport hardened criminals who were not in the country legally. But as we've all seen, that was merely an excuse for a much wider campaign. The hired goons on our streets keep insisting they're only targeting "the worst of the worst," but we can all see that's a lie. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants they've abused had committed no violent crimes at all; for many, the only crime was their immigration status, a misdemeanor offense in most instances.

Even more alarming are the starkly racist attacks on communities of immigrants who have followed the law at every step of the immigration process. Vance's casual racism against Haitian immigrants in the 2024 campaign was the precursor here, as he insisted migrants with legal protected status were actually "illegal aliens." (When called out about his various lies, Vance was stubbornly defiant: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do.")

In the past few weeks, as this white nationalist project has run into resistance, the administration and its allies have dropped the mask entirely. As ICE agents roam the streets of Minneapolis, they've dropped any pretense that they're looking for specific criminals, casually asking residents where they can find "Asians" and telling a detained pastor they let him go because he was white. Most ominously, while the assault on the city was predicated on claims that Somali immigrants were engaged in fraud, the ICE crackdown has targeted the entire Somali community, regardless of their connection to those charges; the president has denounced them as "animals" whose presence in America is "poisoning the blood" of the nation.

In case there's anyone left in the United States who still can't see the racism driving this administration, this administration has announced it in clear terms. Trump, of course, has led the way, with his endless rants about nonwhite people and places – the recurring "shithole countries" theme – while others throughout his administration and allies outside it, like Elon Musk, have perpetuated the "great replacement theory" at all levels.

His Cabinet of loyal lickspittles has predictably followed suit. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth keeps insisting that "diversity is not our strength," for instance, while Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed racist nonsense about vaccines. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem's racism has been so notable that a federal judge issued a ruling claiming she terminated protections for Haitians because of her "hostility to nonwhite immigrants." Not wanting to be left out, even the Department of Labor put out a close paraphrase of the infamous Nazi slogan "one people, one realm, one leader," tweeting out "one homeland, one people, one heritage."

The racism has gotten so overt and shameless that, in response to a Spanish-language halftime performance of Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, Trump's advisor and ... uh, close companion? ... Laura Loomer simply tweeted out "this isn't white enough for me."

To repeat: the Trump administration is, at its core, a white nationalist project.

It is clear to the people running the administration, and it is clear to the people running interference for the administration too. It is clear to people who voted for the administration, whether they stand by that decision or regret it now. It is certainly clear to the people targeted by this administration solely because of the color of their skin. (To his credit, it's even clear to Anderson Cooper now!)

Calling this administration "white nationalist" might seem like an accusation, and I suppose in several senses it is. But more basically, it is an observation, rooted in their record of seemingly endless racist words and white supremacist deeds. There should be no hesitation in calling it out clearly, no effort to give them the benefit of the doubt, no reliance on weasel words.

This is white nationalism, full stop. Some of these people are admitting it openly, while others are still protesting the term only because they know how true it is.

But you can still say what you see: This is white nationalism.