President Trump should not be calling Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog.” The media should not be elevating her highly dubious claims about Trump and his White House. Both can be true.
And while it’s racially insensitive and irresponsible to apply dehumanizing language to African-Americans, especially from a presidential platform, it’s well worth noting Trump compares just about everyone to dogs. Over at National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke did us all a favor by compiling examples of other people Trump has described as having been either “fired like a dog” or “dumped like a dog.”
Cooke writes: “Far from being an aberration, ‘fired like a dog’ is in fact one of Trump’s favorite phrases — and one that he’s used thus far on David Gregory, Erick Erickson, Ted Cruz, Chuck Todd, Bill Maher, and Glenn Beck. Another variation of his — ‘dumped like a dog’ — has been deployed against Hosni Mubarak, Steve Bannon, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. ‘Thrown off ABC like a dog,’ meanwhile, was reserved solely for George Will.”
And the list goes on. “Over the last five years or so,” Cooke adds, “he has suggested that Mitt Romney had ‘choked like a dog’; he has called Mac Miller an ‘ungrateful dog’; he has complained that Kristen Stewart ‘cheated on’ Robert Pattison ‘like a dog’; he has boasted that the Union Leader newspaper was ‘kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog’; and he has accused Brent Bozell of having come ‘begging for money like a dog.'”
Granted, Trump didn’t just compare Omarosa to a dog — he actually called her one. But a quick search of his Twitter reveals he’s done the exact same to Mac Miller, David Axelrod, and Arianna Huffington in recent years.
This was wrong, and Trump has certainly been guilty of using reckless language on more than one occasion. But evidence suggests his motivations were not racist.
