Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose birth certificate investigators may or may not still be in Hawaii, blew the dogwhistle on multiple networks this morning.
During appearances on Fox & Friends and NBC's Today show, Trump implied that President Obama has allowed attacks to occur because he is a secret terrorist sympathizer.
"We're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said during a phone interview on "Fox and Friends."
"And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it, people cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism,' " he said. "There's something going on — it's inconceivable. There's something going on.
On NBC:
Although the GOP candidate said he personally considers the president to be clueless, he gave consideration to conspiracy theories that the president has ulterior motives.
"There are a lot of people who think maybe he doesn't want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn't want to know about it," Trump said.
After seeing Trump's comment this morning I was immediately reminded that this is more or less a mainstream position for Republicans. Many Republicans believe the president is a secret Jihadi and even those who don't believe the Muslim Brotherhood has a direct line into the president's ear.
It's the middle of 2016 and Congress still hasn't passed a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to fight ISIS because some congressmen believe the president would somehow use the AUMF to help ISIS.
The idea that President Obama is a secret terrorist sympathizer is an extension of birtherism. The overarching, racist theme is that President Obama is a Manchurian candidate who duped a nation into voting for him so he could destroy America. He doesn't have America's best interests at heart, they say. They say he isn't interested in protecting America.
If they could get away with publicly calling the president a nigger, they would. Calling him a secret terrorist is their substitute.