President Donald Trump has employed his special force of lying-ass liars (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Hannity et al.) to refute claims that he was being racist when he called ex-star of The Accomplice The Apprentice Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” on Twitter.
The basic argument from Seal Team 86 is basically this: Trump might be an asshole, but he’s not racist, which conveniently leaves out the fact that most racists are assholes. Being both a bigot and a bastard are not mutually exclusive. Yet, the Bullshit Brigade contends that their boss’ derogatory comment wasn’t racist because he has referred to many people as dogs, which is akin to a lawyer defending his client by saying: “My client couldn’t possibly be a murderer because he puts most of his focus and energy into raping.”
But is it true?
To determine if “dog” is something Trump regularly uses to disparage his enemies, we searched the Trump Twitter Archive, the same database we used to sift through every Donald Trump’s tweet about black people.
Here’s what we found:
Is a Dog Like a Dog?
Whether or not you feel that Trump regularly calls people “dogs” comes down to a very nuanced distinction that reveals a very interesting quirk about Donald Trump’s personality, namely, he often castigates people by saying they were treated “like a dog,” but rarely has explicitly referred to people as dogs.
He used the phrase “like a dog” 17 times, seven of which Trump used to laugh at people who were “fired like a dog.” The people who Trump disparaged by saying they were “like a dog” include:
- Mitt Romney: “choked like a dog.”
- The New Hampshire Union-Leader: kicked out of a debate like a dog.
- Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “dumped” like a dog by Barack Obama
- Robert Pattinson: Kristen Stewart cheated on him like a dog.
- Brent Bozell of the National Review: begged for money like a dog.
- Ted Cruz: lies like a dog.
- Hosni Mubarak: America shouldn’t have dropped him like a dog
- George Will: thrown off NBC like a dog.
- David Gregory, Eric Erickson, Ted Cruz’s director of communication, Glenn Beck, Chuck Todd and Bill Maher: all fired like dogs.
The list of people Trump called “a dog” is much shorter
Trump has specifically referred to six people as dogs since he has been on Twitter: Rapper Mac Miller, businessman Lord Sugar, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (retweet), Publisher Arianna Huffington, political strategist David Axelrod and Omarosa Manigault Newman.
That’s it. That’s the list.
Of all the people Trump has called a dog, all were political opponents but only one was black. But it is his least used invective. Here are his favorite insults ranked by the number of times he has used each:
- Stupid (173)
- Dumb (161)
- Dummy (77)
- Fool (50)
- Idiot (32)
- Thug (27)
- Asshole (12)
- Jerk (8)
- Punk (5)
- Bitch (1)
This in no way disproves the fact that Donald Trump is a racist. I have also never called Omarosa a dog.
And everyone knows I’m the real racist.