> That sounds like the "Hitler liked dogs" argument. Just because that police chief sounds like a bad person from the quote doesn't mean that everything he said was bad

This sounds like the “straw man” argument. Just because I made a specific point about a specific utterance does not mean that I was claiming that literally every single thing he said was intrinsically racist. In fact, I think many Americans would be fine with the idea that this was a massive stretch of what I just said.

But you knew that and decided to post anyway.

From context, it's pretty clear who he is talking about.

Except Headley had used "hoodlums from the Negro districts" in the past, and it's pretty clear that it's being used similarly here.

Thank you for explaining that you, who grew up 1,700 miles away, decades later, and not a police chief with the literal legal ability to kill black people with impunity, did not have the exact same thought process as this particular person. That was very helpful and your insight contributed enormously to clarifying the point.

I must admit, I didn’t know the origin of the phrase when Trump said it. I only learned about it after the fact, and passed on the link here.

Yes, the history is fairly well known by people who lived in the late 1960s. It was reported in the press and major magazines.

When someone leads a nation of several hundred million people, it is expected that their public communication be thoroughly vetted. This is even true at a medium to large corporation for an executive.

This is an expectation. I don’t actually believe Trump has anyone filtering his speech and I don’t think he’s educated enough to understand the phrase he said, but with that said, yes, we should expect our leaders to be informed on the nature of the words they say especially in the context of a crisis or emergency.

If Trump didn't know, I suspect that he had adopted the phrase from someone in his circle who does know - can imagine him thinking 'sounds like a catchy way of threatening consequences; I'm going to bust that out next chance I get.'

Even in the US it wasn't well known - most people just learned it was a thing.

I was the one who asked the question and I've lived in the US all my life. I had never heard the phrase or knew that Trump said it until this conversation just now.

We didn’t need to know it to read it as inherently racist. If you can’t interpret that, it’s a problem with reading comprehension.