Trump Is Loving This

Despite the fact that the House of Representatives officially condemned his racist attacks on four freshman Democratic congresswomen of color, and despite the fact that the majority of the country thinks his latest bigoted outburst is “un-American,” President Donald Trump claims he’s loving all this.

In an unprompted phone call to The Daily Mail’s David Martosko on Wednesday, Trump bragged that the furor over his overtly racist demand that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley “go back” to their home countries has landed him just where he wants to be.

“Well, let’s put it this way,” Trump told Martosko. “I’m not unhappy.”

“The only thing they have, that they can do is, now, play the race card,” Trump said, arguing that the strength of the U.S. economy insulates him from more policy-oriented attacks. “Which they’ve always done.”

In fact, Trump’s giddy pleasure at being labeled a bigot makes a perverse degree of political sense. A Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll showed the president’s popularity up five points among Republicans over the past week, while GOP lawmakers have scrambled to either back Trump wholeheartedly, or, worse, reluctantly issue lukewarm condemnations of his specific remarks.

Political sense or not, the fact that Trump seems so happy with the aftermath of his racist attack should tell you all you need to know about what he really values, and what we can likely expect from him in the days, weeks, and months to come.