Seconded. Us non-Americans watching what's going on can't be expected to know something an unremarkable American cop said 50 years ago.
Is it such a well known phrase among Americans or something that most people just learned 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.
Even in the US it wasn't well known - most people just learned it was a thing.
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.