Trump’s racism is sadly in sync with the American id

My friends would tell you I have a freakish memory. On the up side, I know the date of the Mets-Pirates double-header I saw at Shea Stadium (July 3, 1966), and I know the date I was hiking the rim of a canyon in Yellowstone (July 30, 1977).

But on the downside, sadly, I remember the first time I ever heard of Donald Trump.

It was Oct. 16, 1973, in the small Connecticut newsroom where I worked. I was leafing through the New York Times and saw this headline: “Major Landlord Accused Of Anti-black Bias in City.” According to the story, the Justice Department was suing the Trump Management Corp. for refusing to rent any units to Black applicants, thus violating federal law.

Young Donald, corporation president, said the charges were “ridiculous.” I muttered “guy’s a racist” and turned the page.

A court battle ensued. Trump’s mobbed-up lawyer, Roy Cohn, complained the government was harassing his client. But a key Trump employee testified he’d been ordered to tag Black rental applications with a big letter “C” for “colored.” Two years later, in 1975, Donald struck a deal. He promised the feds in writing in the future he would not discriminate to renters of color.

I saw that news story as well, but I basically forgot that Trump existed until 1991, when a former Trump Plaza president named John O’Donnell wrote a book and quoted his old boss as saying that “laziness is a trait in Blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

So naturally it’s no surprise that Trump (or a “staffer”) posted an image depicting the Obamas as apes.

And of course it’s no surprise that he refused to apologize, decreeing that “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”

“Character is destiny,” as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, and Trump’s lifelong lowlife racism was gifted to him by his racist dad. The incidents are endless – and not just the big-ticket items, like his lie Barack was foreign-born and thus not a real American. In the fall of 2015, when Trump was rapidly ascending in the Republican polls, I read a New Yorker piece about his tenure in Atlantic City. It quoted Kip Brown, a former Trump employe who was Black: “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the Black people off the floor…They put us all in the back.”

Did that anecdote go viral? Quite the opposite. Did Trump suffer politically when he blared his racism from the rooftops in 2016, sliming all Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and retweeting a long string of supportive messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Again quite the opposite. In fact – you can look it up – white Americans backed him in three successive elections. In 2016, he won 54 percent of the white vote. In 2020, he won 55 percent. In 2024, he won 55 percent.

Clearly, most whites couldn’t care less when he depicts minorities as less than fully human – referring to Black district attorneys as “animals,” lying that Haitians in Ohio are eating the dogs and cats, demanding four congresswomen of color (all U.S. citizens, three born in America) should “go back to where they came from,” denouncing Kamala Harris as “low IQ” and “lazy as hell” (there’s that laziness thing again)… and those are just random highlights from 2024. So why shouldn’t he post an image of the Obamas as apes? He’s instinctively in sync with the American id.

There’s no political method to his madness. He’s just hard-wired for hate, as he has always been. He can’t help himself. He alleviates his raging insecurities with pseudoscience. His racist expressionism is as primal as one’s urge to visit the toilet.

If a mere “staffer” really posted the ape image, he or she did so in the confident belief Trump would deem it worthy. And why should he bother to rein in his racism anyway? Racism is still his secret sauce. It helped grease his path to power. Now he’s free to roll in the gutter, indulge his lowest instincts, and embed racism as national policy.

The ape image has been deleted, but weeks before it was posted he had already translated his attitude into action. In a (failed) bid to ensure we not even speak of slavery anymore, he dispatched the National Park Service to tear down the slavery exhibits at George Washington’s presidential home in Philadelphia.

It’s a waste of time to hope the ape episode will compel his fervent supporters to rethink their fealty. They’re like the Frank Sinatra fans of yesteryear. Comedian Mike Birbiglia likes to tell the (true) story about his aunt, who went with some friends to a Sinatra concert in Buffalo. They went to the stage door. When Sinatra emerged they yelled, “We love you, Frankie!” He took one look and yelled, “Out of my way, you fat pigs!” Their response: “We love you, Frankie!”

Core MAGA fans aside, I suspect a majority of Americans will cheer Trump’s exit from office however it may occur. Cursed as I am with my freakish nature, I know I’ll forever remember the date, day of the week, hour, and minute. I bet I won’t be alone.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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