President Trump is being racist again. In a tweet Monday morning, the self-proclaimed “least racist person” on the planet attacked Bubba Wallace, the only full-time Black driver in NASCAR’s top racing series, and criticized the sport’s decision to ban the Confederate flag.
In the tweet, Trump asked if Wallace has apologized to “all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?”
The “thing” Trump is referring to is the noose found in Wallace’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama last month. NASCAR determined that the noose was used as a pull rope for a garage door and had been there for months, meaning it wasn’t an attempt to target Wallace. There’s no truth to Trump’s implication that Wallace staged the incident, though.
At the end of his tweet, Trump threw in a defense of the Confederate battle flag, which NASCAR banned in early June after Wallace publicly called for the move to be made.
The tweet appears to be part of a broader strategy borne of Trump’s apparent belief that his only path to victory in November is ramping up his racism. He’s recently defended Confederate monuments and military bases named for confederate leaders, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” and said he may kill a policy meant to reduce racial segregation in housing.
