After a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump on Thursday, Republicans came out in droves to describe the charge (or charges) as unwarranted and politically motivated by a corrupt prosecutor. But a number of them did it by blowing racist dog whistles that call attention to the fact that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is Black. The consistency of that response is yet another reminder of how the MAGA right will never forgo an opportunity to use racist innuendo to rile up its base and amplify its supporters’ persecution complex.
Shortly after news of the indictment emerged, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, tweeted: “A week ago a video circulated of a lunatic harassing a family on a New York subway. He hurled racial slurs (the family was white) and threatened them. Alvin Bragg thinks that man should walk free and Donald Trump should go to jail for a fake misdemeanor. It’s despicable.”
The story he wants to tell is that white civilization is under attack and that a Black man is helping lead the movement.
It’s unclear what video Vance is referring to or whether he’s even talking about somebody who was arrested — and presumably many of Vance’s hundreds of thousands of followers won’t know, either — but the intended message is clear: This Black prosecutor is letting people of color get away with attacking white people — and trying to take down our most important avatar, Donald Trump.
Vance is only the latest Republican to try to frame New York’s criminal justice system as easy on criminals (who are always presumed to be people of color in this narrative) and eager to take down someone it perceives as a political opponent. Never mind that New York doesn’t have a high crime rate by national standards, has long had a draconian criminal justice system and is being run by a tough-on-crime former cop. And never mind that Vance has no way of knowing what legal evidence is being marshaled to charge Trump with a “fake” crime. The facts are beside the point. The story he wants to tell is that white civilization is under attack and that a Black man is helping lead the movement.
Some right-wingers also pushed the narrative that the indictment represented the U.S.’s descent into a “third world” political system. Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump called the indictment “third world prosecutorial misconduct.” Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., took that sentiment a little further with his post on Truth Social: “This is third world politics from a Soros DA who needs to be investigated. This is clear and brazen political persecution.”
It’s not surprising that figures such as Eric Trump or Gosar are using the politically provocative term “third world.” But what’s striking is that they are attempting to undermine and racially code Bragg’s illegitimacy using a term reserved for developing countries in the Global South. It’s also substantively just a silly analysis — as my colleague Hayes Brown pointed out: “Holding current and former leaders accountable is a basic function of any democratic state. See: the many, many trials of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.”
This didn’t spring out of nowhere. In the past Donald Trump has called Bragg a “Soros-backed animal.” That’s not even a dog whistle; that’s just blatantly racist.
The references to the liberal activist billionaire George Soros are also laden with racialized undertones. The point of flagging Soros, who has never given money to Bragg, invokes the specter of a shadowy Jewish force pulling strings from behind the scenes.
The right could have suggested that corruption is to blame for the Trump indictment without using racist and antisemitic subtexts to make its point. Some on the right did. But many right-wing nationalists capitalized on it as yet another opportunity to reduce the world to a series of clashes between racial in-groups and out-groups, and provoke fears about what might happen if white America doesn’t snuff out an emerging Black and Jewish threat.
