Donald Trump has a particular taste for the degradation of racial, ethnic and religious minorities and women — and God forbid those identities should overlap — as a way of playing out his personal sense of racial, sexist, and patriarchal entitlement. And as he degrades, he plays to those very same entitlements in the base that elected him.

This has manifested itself most recently in a despicable episode in which Trump became embroiled in a controversy — mostly of his own making! — over an unacceptable call he made to a pregnant widow of one of four soldiers killed in a still-murky attack in Niger.

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a black woman, knew the fallen soldier and his widow and was in the car when the president called to offer condolences. Wilson seems to have correctly reported what Trump said.

This set Trump off and he issued a stream of lies to defame Wilson. The White House even sent its chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, out to defend the president. He, too, lied about Wilson.