Bill Kristol described President Trump’s tweets about leaving UCLA basketball players in a Chinese jail as a “dog whistle” on CNN Monday.
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Kristol, appearing on “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” said, “I mean, I’ve talked to some reluctant Trump supporters, I would characterize them as, who are getting a little sick of it. So you maybe get some erosion in that respect. On the other hand, it’s a good device to distract people. He tends to pick on people who are unpopular, at least with his supporters, and maybe with a broader swath of the public, people who don’t stand up for the national anthem, the father of the of the NBA basketball players…and these are also, let’s just say, from minority groups, where I think he has a little bit of a dog whistle there.”
“I mean, I don’t have approve of it obviously, but I don’t think he’s entirely foolish. I mean, he knows what he’s doing. He has an instinct, if I can pick fights with unpopular people or people who seem to be like Hillary Clinton, you know angry because they lost, that’s better than actually debating the issues,” he concluded.