Story highlights Julian Zelizer: President Trump's comments on Colin Kaepernick and Steph Curry are ways to create false populism

He continues to exploit racial division for political support from his base, writes Zelizer

Julian Zelizer is a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University and the author of "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." He's also the co-host of the "Politics & Polls" podcast. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) President Donald Trump is going to war with some high-profile African-American athletes who have political thoughts on their minds. The President said that fans should walk out when NFL players like Colin Kaepernick take a knee during the national anthem to protest our nation's inadequate response to racial inequities.

withdrawal of the invitation. After the NBA superstar Stephen Curry told the media that he did not want to go to the White House to be honored by Trump, the President decided to take time from his busy day to tweet

It would be easy to see this as just one more trivial story about an immature president who watches too much television and has no control over his rhetorical impulses.

But it's much worse than that. Trump's desire to go after an African-American athlete who has been protesting our well-documented problems with race and criminal justice, or an African-American athlete who does not feel comfortable in the White House given the President's controversial positions on social issues, fit into a longer and troubling history of his capitalizing on the politics of racial division.

He has used these issues to stir up his base, always reminding them with a figurative wink and a tweet that he has not forgotten them, and to take a stand against efforts to promote social equality that he dismisses as silly political correctness. These moments often come when, in practice, the President has not done much to provide real assistance to those who supported him and moments when he was proving to be more comfortable with the Washington establishment -- even with Democrats -- than he said he would be.

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