Our so-called president did it again yesterday; he made a statement so blatantly bigoted and hateful it dominated the news cycle until the next outrageously racist thing he says.

President Trump during California #SanctuaryCities Roundtable: “These aren’t people. These are animals.”Full video here: https://t.co/alyS47LI5V pic.twitter.com/ifXicTHHP0

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 16, 2018

And as usual, we have a host of right wing media pundits out there trying to claim he was only referring to MS-13 gang members — and extending that to accuse liberals and the mainstream media of sympathizing with the violent MS-13 gang.

But making this bad faith argument requires you to completely ignore Trump’s long, long history of making similar statements, calling immigrants “murderers” and “rapists,” saying they come from “shithole countries,” etc. If context is supposed to be important, then Donald Trump himself is all the context you need to evaluate this disgusting comment.

And there’s a simple way to see how the right wing base really feels about undocumented immigrants: browse through the comment sections of any of these dishonest right wing defenses. Most Trump voters absolutely love it when their dear leader makes extreme dehumanizing remarks like this.

Let’s face it. This is why they voted for him.

I really don’t know why right wingers even bother trying to run interference at this point. It’s risible beyond belief. They know what kind of person Donald Trump is. Just drop the pretense and the disingenuous bad faith arguments, folks, and embrace him. He’s your guy. Why keep fighting to picture him as something he isn’t?