If you think that’s an exaggeration, look at how explicitly and unapologetically he invokes the notion that the American born judge is “a Mexican” in his interview with Jake Tapper:

Doesn’t he sound like he means every word more than most he speaks?

Many conservatives correctly believe this defense of prejudice threatens their coalition’s future. For years, the right has claimed that it gets a bad rap—that the GOP isn’t bigoted, its members merely oppose treating race and ethnicity as defining factors.

Now the GOP standard-bearer has gone on television and explicitly defended identity-based prejudice. As if that weren’t bad enough, the course he’s chosen cannot be explained away as a verbal lapse, spoken off the cuff and renounced when its implications were understood. Trump’s campaign staffers tried to reverse course.

Yet according to Bloomberg reporters who are privy to what Donald Trump told his campaign organization during a recent conference call, the candidate overruled his underlings: he ordered his surrogates to attempt to impugn Curiel’s credibility and, bizarrely, to attack journalists covering the controversy as the real racists.

This is calculated, premeditated doubling-down—and urging false accusations of racism, to boot.

Republican Senator Ben Sasse reacted to Trump’s behavior by declaring: “Saying someone can't do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of ‘racism.’”

It isn’t just that Donald Trump supporters have made a tactical mistake, Charles Krauthammer declared on Fox News: “They have to ask themselves morally, is this the man you want to be the leader of your party? And that’s what’s at stake here.”

Many of the candidate’s endorsers are clearly uncomfortable.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and the former speaker Newt Gingrich have all publicly criticized Trump’s comments. Those critiques are to their credit, but merely criticizing Trump is not enough to get them out of the corner into which they’ve foolishly painted themselves.

They’ve now told the American people that the man they all endorsed to be president is irresponsibly launching nakedly prejudiced attacks on a federal judge—but also shown they don’t regard that behavior as reason enough to withdraw their endorsements.

Especially for Ryan, Rubio, and others who’ve invested in changing the perception that the Republican Party is hostile to minorities, this is both a strategic setback and an albatross that political opponents can and will hang around their necks. “Even when confronted with behavior that you yourself believed to be nakedly prejudiced toward Americans of Hispanic heritage,” future critics can truthfully say, “you kept on endorsing the man responsible. Why should anyone trust that you possess the integrity to stand against bigotry or believe you when you say that you’ll represent people of all backgrounds?”