Just as some portion of the mainstream media is beginning to report accurately on the overt racism of Donald Trump, Michael Che of Saturday Night Live comes up with an alternate theory that makes sense:

“At this point Trump is the political equivalent of a phone sex operator. He’s just whispering whatever dirty little racist fantasies Republicans want to hear.”

The segment on last night’s SNL Weekend Update is one of the funniest bits of the whole campaign season. Che’s premise is that Trump is not actually racist at all, despite all the evidence pouring out of his own mouth. Che notes Trump’s prior associations with people like Don King and Apprentice contestant Omarosa. He says that…

“I don’t believe that Donald Trump is a racist. He’s just pandering to the most prejudiced segment of the country. He’s hustling them. […] None of what he’s saying is true. You don’t just develop racism overnight on the campaign trail. Racism is embedded deep down in a person’s soul. I’ve looked into that man’s eyes. Donald Trump doesn’t have a soul.”

Indeed, Trump appears to have no moral center. His positions on issues have spun wildly from being pro-choice to total opposition to any abortion; from advocating tax increases for the wealthy to proposing across-the-board tax cuts; from favoring universal health care to dismissing ObamaCare as a disaster; from floating an isolationist foreign policy just a few weeks ago that would have Russia fighting with Syria against ISIS to his new promise to “bomb the shit out of ISIS?” He even praised Hillary Clinton effusively calling her a “terrific woman,” but he now says that she was “the worst Secretary of State in the history of the United States.”

Either Trump is nursing multiple personalities or he is just adopting positions that he thinks he can exploit to advance his craving for power and adulation. He does have an eager audience among ill-informed Tea Party discontents who don’t mind being lied to (see the Trump Bullsitopedia for a growing catalog of his lies). In fact, like the phone sex patron, it seems to turn them on. They have an uncanny ability to let their imaginations subsume reality so long as it satisfies their political lusts.

However, it doesn’t seem possible that someone could so fiercely promulgate such ugly rhetoric without that sort of bigotry being ingrained in them. A decent, tolerant person with respect for others would choke and stammer trying to say the hateful things that comprise Trump’s platform. Trump says them with such confidence and certainty that he could not possibly be putting it on. Perhaps Che’s contention that Trump lacks a soul could account for his being able to pitch this hate speech. But either way it means that he is fully capable of harboring the most vile forms of bigotry. And Che is addressing it in what may be the most effective way – with ridicule.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.