Keller @ Large: Trump Insult May Have Lasting Impact
BOSTON (CBS) - "I'm not a racist," says President Trump in the wake of eyewitness accounts of his vulgar reference to predominantly non-white countries during a White House meeting. "I'm the least racist person you have ever interviewed."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is unpersuaded, to say the least. "We face the challenge of an openly-racist president of the United States," she said at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Boston.
It's one thing when Trump-hating democrats like Warren say it. But when a Trump golfing buddy like GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) says yes, the president said it, and he's mortified by it; and when the likes of arch-conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), facing a re-election fight this year, says he prefers to avoid "the nastiness"; and when the ultra-conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is tweeting that Dr. King "would remind us today that no country is a "hole," no person unworthy of respect," it has the makings of a lingering political problem for Mr. Trump.
Why, when so much seems to slide off his back?
The vulgarity of the president's language, and his belated, dubious denial of it, combined with his willingness to punish the so-called Dreamers, an immigrant group 79% of Americans say they want to let stay, fuels the most unflattering public perceptions of this president.
And veteran pols like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) know an exploitable blunder when they see one, telling a King celebration today that "we were all shocked by the foul language President Trump used to insult everyone in America."
Note the effort to universalize the insult. If it works, this may be one Trump shocker with lasting impact.