'Mindboggling' how we've become numb to Trump's 'racist dog whistles': CNN legal analyst

Former President Donald Trump seemed to take a shot at Judge Juan Merchan's ethnicity this week when he said of the Colombian-born judge, "Take a look at where he comes from."

The remark was reminiscent of Trump's openly racist attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel in 2016 in which Trump suggested Curiel could not fairly oversee the Trump University civil lawsuit because of his "Mexican" heritage.

In analyzing Trump's remarks on CNN, host Brianna Keilar expressed surprise that Trump hadn't really gone after Merchan's ethnicity before, although Trump ally Rudy Giuliani did throw out an apparent racist dog whistle against Merchan last month when he argued that he is "not a judge in the tradition of Anglo-American jurists."

"I'm sort of surprised it took him this long to get to this point," agreed panelist Molly Ball. "It definitely does echo that old incident with Judge Curiel and I think it reminds a lot of people of how he tends to see the world, which is in terms of... these kinds of prejudices."

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Legal analyst Elliot Williams, meanwhile, said it was astonishing how much Trump had lowered Americans' collective expectations about how political candidates should behave when observers can legitimately express surprise that Trump hasn't been even more racist in his attacks on Judge Merchan.

"Our daily reminder of how far we've fallen as a nation," he said. "It is remarkable for us to sit here and say, 'Wow, it's been a month and he hasn't used a racist dog whistle yet...' He has shifted norms of how we talk about and what we expect of leaders so far that it's almost remarkable that he hasn't made fun of this man's ethnic heritage. It's mindboggling at this point."

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