After the security breach at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner resulted in a biracial man being booked on suspicion of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump, the 44th president, Barack Obama, was as cautious and measured as ever. In a Sunday afternoon post on X, he wrote, “Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all [of] us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day.” Speaking of the agency that’s still protecting him and his family, Obama wrote, “I’m grateful to them — and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.”
It’s beyond the pale for Barnett to link Cole to Obama.
On that same platform Monday afternoon, conservative lawyer Jonathan Turley criticized him for saying on Sunday that we didn’t yet have details about the attacker’s motivations, while Randy Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown Law School, referred to the name of the suspect in responding with a disgusting remark: “If Obama had a son, he’d attack the White House Correspondents Dinner like Cole Allen.”
Barnett isn’t a nobody. He’s a big name in conservative legal circles, so much so that when the Trump administration was looking for help making its racist argument against birthright citizenship, Barnett was one of the ideologues who stepped up. While it’s not necessarily shocking that a person arguing against automatic citizenship for people born on U.S. soil would hold bigoted views, it’s beyond the pale for Barnett to link Cole (who has self-reported as half Black and half white) to the biracial Obama.
But if there is one thing that unites people under the MAGA banner, it is their unyielding contempt for Obama, a contempt expressed far too often with racist language, if not racist imagery. Obama’s final day as president was almost 10 years ago. Yet he still commands this level of attention and vitriol from Trump and his supporters.
Less than three months ago, Trump shared a disgustingly racist video on social media depicting the former president and first lady Michelle Obama as primates. While Trump is the one who was convicted of dozens of felonies and initially charged with dozens more, he has shared artificial intelligence-generated animations of President Obama being arrested in the Oval Office as Trump looks on.
Barnett appears to share Trump’s fixation. His “if Obama had a son” remark was a response to comments Obama made more than 12 years ago when asked about 17-year-old homicide victim Trayvon Martin. The teen was walking back to his father’s home from the store when he was shot down by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman. In what counts as one of Obama’s strongest moments on race during his tenure in the White House, he said, “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pull together. My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”
Obama spoke to Black Americans during a particular time of turmoil and in a way that engendered sympathy and togetherness. But Barnett saw fit to lampoon and belittle the president who treated such a painful moment for Black Americans with the empathy it deserved.
And he couldn’t even treat the big story of the moment with the appropriate seriousness and gravity. It’s telling that in comments after an apparent threat on the president’s life, Barnett was thinking about race and a man who hadn’t been president in nearly a decade. Alas, this is MAGA. There’s an irony in the quote from Obama that Barnett chose to lampoon. But Trump lacks empathy, and it appears that the people who support him do, too.
In the larger scheme of things, Barnett’s tweet doesn’t matter nearly as much as his effort to persuade the Supreme Court to upend the understanding of citizenship. Our job in this moment is to vehemently resist such efforts to normalize his “alternative theories” and to call out the racism and xenophobia at their root. Those of us who favor real togetherness must not give any benefits of the doubt to MAGA masterminds such as Barnett who want selective inclusion.
Still, the law professor’s X post matters, if only because his insult pulls back the mask from an attorney whose guidance the administration sought in promoting its white nationalist reading of the 14th Amendment.
Barnett helps remind us that racism and opposition to Obama have always been two forces driving the conservative, anti-constitutional backlash we’re witnessing, and often enough it feels like those two forces are one and the same. In other words, it can feel impossible to try to tease out the opposition to Obama from racism itself. And posts like Barnett’s can make it feel like there’s no need to try.
Charles F. Coleman Jr.
Charles F. Coleman Jr. is a civil rights attorney and a former Brooklyn, New York, prosecutor. He is an MSNBC legal analyst. Follow him on Twitter @CFColemanJr.