Last weekend, the president's lackeys spent Sunday on the television defending his racist tweets. This past weekend, the president's lackeys spent Sunday on the television defending his racist tweets. In fairness, they were different tweets each time: a week ago, it was Donald Trump's call for four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they came from. This time, it was an attack on Congressman Elijah Cummings, who represents parts of Baltimore, a majority-black city the President of the United States called a "disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess" where "no human being would want to live." The implication, of course, is that it's a place for vermin, not for people, which has the obvious effect of dehumanizing the people who very much do live there. It's racism.

That didn't stop our fearless leader's various defenders from suggesting it was acceptable behavior because Cummings had criticized the conditions of the migrant camps at the border. Oh, you questioned the morality of the United States government running facilities where kids keep dying? You should've known the president would unleash a racist tirade in your direction. Just ask his (Permanently) Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney.

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CHRIS WALLACE: There's a clear pattern of Trump using the term "infested" to refer to black communities



MICK MULVANEY: You're spending way too much time reading between the lines



CW: I'm not reading between the lines. I'm reading the lines



MM: That's what POTUS does. He fights pic.twitter.com/Kp7AzhzYin — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2019

"I'm not reading between the lines," Chris Wallace said. "I'm reading the lines." That's the thing about dispensing with the inside voice, as Trump has done. It's no longer a matter of interpretation. But of course Mulvaney had to make things weird, bringing up, unprompted, that Congressman Adam Schiff is Jewish while suggesting the attacks on Cummings had "zero" to do with race. Convincing! Mulvaney knows better than all this, however: in 2016, he called Trump a "terrible human being." Now he's just another lackey, defending the president's proposal for The Wall after having called it, back in 2015, "absurd and almost childish." Maybe it became a Very Adult Plan over the last few years. Whatever's necessary to stay close to power.

Mulvaney wasn't the only one suggesting the president's racist spasm was justified because Cummings criticized (Also Acting) Homeland Security Chief Kevin McAleenan. Florida Senator Rick Scott got in on the action, too, albeit with a certain lack of commitment.

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CHUCK TODD: Senator, do you think Trump's racial tweets are good politics?@SenRickScott: Well, Rep Cummings attacked our border agents



T: So that justifies a racial resentment tweet?



SCOTT: Look, I didn't do the tweets. I'm disappointed in Rep Cummings pic.twitter.com/xxrq9a77Th — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2019

While many Border Patrol officers are surely doing what McAleenan called his "level best" in his exchange with Cummings, some 9,000 current and former agents are also part of a Facebook group where they joke about migrant deaths and sexually humiliating sitting members of Congress. The current head of Border Patrol, Carla Provost, was a member of the group. This seems like a cultural problem at the agency. Also, kids keep dying and the conditions are horrific. Cummings' criticism was directed at the head of a government agency, which gets to the heart of his mandate as chair of the House Oversight Committee, but it should not be verboten to criticize the behavior of any agent of the state—even a police officer or a Border Patrol agent—if it's merited.

Here, Scott half-heartedly suggested Cummings went after rank-and-file agents, so anything goes in response. Then, having suggested "let's look at what [Trump] said and why he did it," Scott said, "Look, I didn't do the tweets, Chuck. I can't talk about why he did what he did." Brave! Then he lied and suggested congressional Democrats have not provided any resources to address the problem after they just (foolishly) handed over $4.6 billion in border funding for the administration to do with as it pleased.

But even if Cummings had gone after individual border agents, it would not merit the president's response, which has been just the latest in an escalating campaign of racist division as the 2020 cycle kicks off in earnest. Unfortunately, this seems to be his strategy, with the aid and comfort of his hopeless sycophants, his vassals seeking influence and power in an emerging national order in which allegiance to The Leader is paramount.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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