How Trump flipped America's race conversation

Flashback: Before Trump came on the scene in 2015, it was common in modern American politics for elected or appointed officials to face consequences for making racist or bigoted comments.

• As far back as 1976, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz was forced to resign after telling a racist joke about Black Americans on a flight returning from the GOP convention.
• In 2002, GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was pressured to step down after praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign.
• Even during Trump's first term, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) was censured and removed from committees for questioning why terms such as "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" had become offensive.

But Trump himself has been largely impervious to those norms, with public outrage over his caustic language growing more muted year after year.

• Trump vaulted into political prominence by promoting the racist conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. — a playbook he revived in 2024 against other rivals of color.
• His 2016 campaign-opening claim that Mexico was sending "rapists" into the U.S. triggered weeks of national uproar, as did his leaked complaint in 2018 about immigration from "shithole countries."

Zoom in: Then came the 2024 election campaign, which blew open the Overton window on race and identity.

• Trump discarded any lingering restraint, declaring that unauthorized immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country" (echoing a Nazi theme), and amplifying false claims that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating pets.
• Conservatives mobilized around backlash to the 2020 racial justice movement, the Biden administration's immigration policies and perceived censorship of political speech by the left.
• Trump's MAGA movement treated his 2024 win as a sweeping cultural mandate — and grew more explicit in their mission to "defend Western civilization" and preserve white Christian identity.

Zoom out: Nearly a year into Trump's second term, language that once led to denials, clarifications or resignations now circulates freely online and at the highest levels of government.

• GOP members of Congress reacted to New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's election by posting images of the 9/11 attacks and calling for the Ugandan-born Democrat to be denaturalized and deported.
• The Department of Homeland Security and White House social media accounts now routinely mock immigrants targeted for deportation, deploying trollish memes on official channels.

• White nationalist Nick Fuentes has edged into the mainstream, with Trump defending the Holocaust denier's interview with Tucker Carlson as legitimate political dialogue.

What they're saying: In a Thanksgiving post on his Truth Social, Trump claimed that "most" of America's 53 million foreign-born residents are "on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels."

• He blasted Americans who have been "politically correct" on immigration, labeled Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz "seriously retarded," and mocked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as "always wrapped in her swaddling hijab."
• White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios in a statement: "It's not racist to want secure borders and to deport illegal aliens who are undermining our sovereignty and destroying our country. President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency."

Between the lines: Immigrant and civil-rights advocates say the president's incendiary rhetoric on race has manifested in policies that privilege white people.

• After slashing the U.S. refugee cap to a historic low of 7,500, the Trump administration said it would prioritize white South Africans for nearly all available slots.
• The administration has gutted major pillars of America's civil rights protections and racial equity infrastructure, wiping away public data, slashing research funding, and recasting Black history.