Republicans mounted a full-throated offensive on the Sunday shows today to defend Donald Trump's racist statements against four non-white Democratic congresswomen—and to defend him from the "Send her back!" chants Trump inspired during his attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar during a North Carolina rally. This follows a Washington Post report describing Trump advisers' attempt to shift from the overt racism exposed in Trump's extended attacks and subsequent "Send her back!" chants to instead questioning his targets' "patriotism"; each of the Republicans tasked with defending Trump attempted to adhere to these new talking points.
And yes, Team Trump is enough of a tire fire at this point that an orchestrated campaign to question the very patriotism of his political adversaries, long considered one of the most toxic and lowbrow efforts in politics, is seen as a step up from Trump's current racism.
That the White House chose the advising architect of Trump's anti-immigration policies, dead-eyed white nationalist Stephen Miller, to spearhead the effort should clarify just where the White House stands on the uproar. Miller is an awkward television presence at best, a largely emotionless advocate for brutal, maximalist policies against non-white migrants and refugees; his inability to feign anything but contempt for his targets make him an extraordinary poor choice as White House spokesman except in those instances when the White House seeks to signal maximalist support for those maximalist policies.
He is the adviser sent out to shore up Trump's racist and white nationalist base, in other words, and made little effort to pretend otherwise on Fox News today. He taxed even Fox host Chris Wallace's patience, at one point distinguishing Trump's own long history of criticizing the United States from critiques by Trump's non-white opponents by claiming Trump's criticisms are intended to uphold "the principles of Western civilization." (This is, of course, one of the most commonplace of white nationalist attacks. Miller may be the only human being in politics with less subtlety than Trump himself.)
It was other members of the Republican hard-right that assisted in backing up the White House's new attacks. Trump campaign aide Mercedes Schlapp sallied forth to claim that Trump was not racist and had properly disavowed his rally crowd's racist chants, even as she defended Trump's retweet of Islamophobic far-right commenter Katie Hopkins, who praised Trump's attacks and called "Send her back" the new "lock her up." It did not go well. Rep. Liz Cheney fared little better.
The White House even trotted out the vapid-to-the-point-of-translucency Vice President Mike Pence, who thinly offered that Trump "might make an effort" to stop racist chanting at his rallies in the future. Might, he said.
The takeaway from all of this is that Trump intends to continue his racist attacks, possibly while sliding in and out of the new "they hate our country" framing that his advisers believe, implausibly, will better mask the racism. And Republican leaders are continuing to rally around Trump en masse, content with Trump shifting the territory of the 2020 campaign into overt white nationalist frothing and eager to assist his attempts to demonize their non-white colleagues if it means avoiding his attacks themselves. We can expect Trump's behavior to get even worse, this coming week.