The Rev Al Sharpton has joined a growing chorus against Donald Trump’s use of the word “riggers” as the former president lashes out at Black prosecutors and judges overseeing the criminal cases against him for his attempts to subvert the 2020 election.
The civil rights activist also condemned an apparent refusal from Republican Party leadership and other GOP officials to denounce Mr Trump’s statement, received by his supporters in far-right online forums and on social media as an apparent appeal to their racism and support for political violence.
Mr Trump has repeatedly hurled abuse at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has received a barrage of harassing emails and threats while leading a sprawling criminal case against him in Georgia. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan – the judge overseeing one of two federal cases against Mr Trump – was threatened in a message calling her a racist slur and a “slave”.
“This woman, to call a federal office, or call a judge’s chambers … using a word that rhymes with the n-word. Donald Trump himself, their leader, using the term ‘riggers’, which clearly rhymes with the N-word,” Mr Sharpton said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on 17 August.
“I mean, this is not exactly … 30 years ago, when we marched against him on the Central Park Five,” added Mr Sharpton, referring to Mr Trump’s demands that five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in New York in 1989 face the death penalty. They were exonerated; Mr Trump has refused to apologise.
“Is this the kind of party the Republicans want to show the country that they are?” he said. “There’s no wonder independents are running away from them. To identify with blatant racism and blatant violence is not the party that we need. … We need a two-party system. But we don’t need one good practice itself in bigotry.”
A former White House communications director said Mr Trump’s latest remark is not merely a racist dogwhistle but a “bullhorn”.
“With Trump, you don’t need to look for a dog whistle. It’s a bullhorn when it comes to race, and I do think that’s deliberate,” Alyssa Fara Griffin told CNN on 16 August.
“He’s not really hiding that he’s going to lean into that element,” she added. “When you saw the courtroom, it was a lot of Black men and women who were serving in that courtroom. … The fact that he’s introducing race into this prosecution surprises me, it’s disgusting, it’s textbook Donald Trump, but it comes as no surprise.”
“Riggers” has long been used as a barely veiled racist slur against Black Democratic officials and voters. Shortly after Mr Trump use of the word, a flood of racist messages filled far-right pro-Trump online forums. Similar attacks using the word towards Mr Sharpton also surfaced across social media after his Morning Joe appearance.
Mr Sharpton and Mr Trump formerly had crossed paths as high-profile New Yorkers before Mr Trump’s presidential ascent, but Mr Sharpton has asserted that he had no relationship with the former president and that their unlikely, infrequent alliances were merely transactional. Mr Trump has called him a “con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score.”
