It used to be that you had to read between the lines to determine that Donald Trump was stoking racial resentments. And it used to be that the subjects of his racial animus were mostly immigrants. But now, increasingly, he’s casting a wider net and amping up his rhetoric.

In the wake of two fatal police killings and five officers being gunned down at a rally held in response to those killings, Trump wasted no time in turning his attention within our country’s borders to the Black Lives Matter movement.

And having already denounced the movement for its “horrible” rhetoric and “divisive” name at a rally in Westfield, Indiana, last night, he suggested something worse.

“The other night, you had 11 – think of it – 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage,” he said. “Marches all over the United States. And tough marches. Anger, hatred – hatred started by a maniac that some people asked for a moment of silence for him. For the killer. For the killer.”

The sentence construction here is so poor that the shocking accusation takes a moment to sink in, but what he’s actually suggesting is unambiguous: that the rallies around the country last week were born not out of reaction to the long history of unjust killings of black men at the hands of police, but out of one extremist’s racial animus. Further, that movement members supported the killer in calling for a moment of silence.

There is no evidence to support either point, but the latter appears to be one he’s particularly intent on spreading.

He mentioned it twice in a recent appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, saying when asked what he thought of the Black Lives Matter movement: “I saw what they said about the police in various marches and rallies. I have seen, you know, moments of silence called for – for this horrible human being who shot the policeman.”

Trump isn’t the only one to erroneously lay police slayings at the feet of a peaceful movement. (The morning after the tragedy the rightwing Drudge Report ran with a banner headline declaring, “Black Lives Kills Four Police Officers”.) But he’s the only one to do it and still get to run for president.

And the fact that he’s claiming to have personally seen something there is no evidence ever occurred, something that will allow him to blame a large group of minorities for the extremist actions of a few, is part of a pattern.

Remember this fall when he claimed to have personally witnessed “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the September 11 attacks in the streets of New Jersey while watching television? And remember when people looked into it no such footage was ever broadcast, and New Jersey officials said for the record that no such thing ever occurred? This is more of the same.

Now he’s going so far as to suggest that Black Lives Matters is “inherently racist”, or at least that “lot of people feel that it is”. The reason he gives is that the term is divisive “because all lives matter”.

If all lives did, we wouldn’t have to say “black lives matter” any more.

Trump has made some half-hearted attempts to win over African Americans (after all, unlike the foreigners he demonizes, they actually vote), but more often than not, his efforts backfire. Take, for instance, his saying in the interview with O’Reilly that he can “really relate to” discrimination since he’s experienced it on the campaign.

“When I ran for president I could see what is going on with the system, and the system is rigged,” he said, referring to the brief moment earlier this year when it looked like he might not secure the presidential nomination.

Of course, as a white male born into a family with tremendous connections and wealth, as a man who inherited an estimated $150m from his father, and as a man who regularly outsources his fights to top lawyers, the opposite is true.

Yet it doesn’t seem to help to point out the system is rigged in his favor, and to call him a racist is almost to play into his hands. Because when we say such things the poor white Americans who support him, the ones whose economic decline has gone unnoticed and whose racial resentments are often the subject of liberal castigation, identify with him.

Never mind that Trump is nothing like them. That he was born rich and coddled, much more so than the intellectual elites they’ve come to despise. Trump knows how to speak to them.

When we say he’s racist, they hear their own names instead, and it only puts gas on his fire.