When he said on Tuesday, “Those people are living in hell in Baltimore,” and when he tweeted on Saturday that majority-black Baltimore is such “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” that “no human being would want to live there,” he considers those statements to be love. “They really appreciate what I’m doing,” he said. He considers Representative Elijah Cummings to be hate.

When Trump tweeted on June 19, 2018, that Democrats “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13,” that is what he considers love. He asked Americans during his State of the Union address earlier this year “to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country.”

To the red-hats, Trump himself embodies love, and his critics, especially the antiracist critics of color, embody hate. Al Sharpton “Hates Whites & Cops,” as Trump tweeted Monday.

Peter Beinart: Trump is making up reasons to stoke racial fears

In advance of Trump’s Fourth of July event in Washington, Trump opponents and supporters squared off all the way from the White House to the expanse of the National Mall. At one point, the red-hats chanted, “I love America, I love America.”

For many Trump supporters, to love Trump is to love white people is to love America. To hate Trump is to hate white people is to hate America. This love-hate duality is essential to understanding Trumpism, and essential to the mind game Trump and his lieutenants have been playing with white Americans.

According to a recent Fox News survey, Trump still retains majority approval from every segment of white voters except college-educated white women. White people, too, are victims of his domestic assaults, his alternative facts, his dalliances with Vladimir Putin, his tariffs, and his tax cuts for the super-rich. But while many white voters break up and make up with Trump, most never leave. Their white fragility, to use Robin DiAngelo’s term, makes them crave the security of Trumpism. He loves them. They love America. He is America.

He is them. They are him. Whiteness all told.

The red-hats don’t like being told that their pro-life label is bogus when they are not fiercely opposing the march to war with Iran; that their defense of American Jews is a charade when they join forces with anti-Semitic white nationalists; or that their Christian identity is a sham when they worship a man who is the antithesis of Jesus Christ. Trump makes the red-hats feel good by telling them he loves them, and by telling them they are not racist—their antiracist critics are the real racists. He makes them feel good when he says that they are the real patriots, that their “civilization” is superior, and that they have more because they work harder and better.