The Herrenvolk President

"But there's another way to read Trump's promise—not as a commitment to economic populism but as a statement of racial solidarity. Far from acting as a president for all Americans, he's governed explicitly as a president for white Americans and the racial reactionaries among them. He's spoken to their fear and fanned their anger, making his office a rallying point for those who see decline in multiracial democracy and his administration a tool for those who would turn the clock back on racial progress. If those Americans are the 'forgotten men and women' of President Trump's inaugural address, then he's been a man of his word."

Jamelle Bouie at Slate argues that Trumpism's "simmering pursuit of racial grievance has been its defining characteristic and threatens to be its most enduring achievement.