Thread by @ajplus

President Trump recently told congresswomen of color like @AOC and @IlhanMN that they should "go back" to the countries they came from.

@ZeeshanAleem unpacks how Trump has used racist language since the start of his political career – and how that's paid off for him: (1/11)

Trump made his first splash on the political scene by championing birtherism, a racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama wasn't a valid U.S. citizen.

For a brief moment in 2011 it helped push him near the top of presidential polls. (2/11)
abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-…

Trump kicked off his presidential campaign in 2015 by describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and erroneously warned that they brought "crime" and "drugs" to the U.S.

Shortly thereafter, he became a front-runner in the Republican race. (3/11)
washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…

Toward the end of 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. and said he'd force all Muslims to register in a special database.

Not too long after that, he hit a new high in the polls. (4/11)
politico.com/story/2015/12/…

Political analysts thought Trump's overtly racist demagoguery would derail his nomination and make him unelectable. But it didn't.

In fact, study after study show white racial resentment predicted support for Trump. His invective mobilized voters. (5/10) vox.com/identities/201…

In 2017, Trump refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists at a Charlottesville rally that resulted in the murder of a woman, and suggested that counter-protests were deserving of blame. His response implied sympathy for the supremacists. (6/11)

In 2018, Trump reportedly described Haiti and African states as "shithole countries" in a meeting, and said he preferred immigrants from countries like Norway.

He denied the reports, but he has a long, long history of making such remarks: (7/11)
vox.com/2016/7/25/1227…

Trump used racialized fear-mongering about the U.S.-Mexican border to drive huge Republican turnout in the 2018 elections.

It wasn't enough to hold off a Democratic wave, but it showed how he sees white identity as central to voter behavior. (8/11)
cnn.com/2018/10/30/pol…

In June, Trump refused to apologize to the Central Park Five.

In 1989, Trump ran ads in 4 newspapers calling for the execution of the 5 black and Latino teens who were accused of rape. Despite their exoneration, Trump says he did nothing wrong. (9/11)

Trump's takeaway from 2016 was that bigoted language works – and it's crucial to his 2020 strategy.

He has called Democratic presidential candidate @ewarren "Pocahontas" and used her to make light of the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. (10/10)

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1094368870415110145

Trump says he's not bothered by accusations that his tweets this weekend were racist, since "many people agree with me."

Who are those people? His white nationalist base. They delivered him an election before. He believes they'll do it again. (11/11)