Ex-Trump aide slams his use of word ‘riggers’ on Truth Social as a racist ‘bullhorn’

A former aide to Donald Trump has condemned his use of the word “riggers”, saying that it is “not a racial dogwhistle” – it’s actually a racist “bullhorn”.

After he was indicted on charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia this week, the former president launched into an angry rant on his Truth Social platform.

In it, he claimed that he would announce a “large, complex, detailed but irrefutable REPORT” proving his election fraud claims in Georgia in a press conference slated for Monday 21 August.

But, in the tirade, he also spewed what appeared to be a racist dog whistle.

“There will be a complete EXONERATION!” Mr Trump wrote. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that found to find the RIGGERS!.”

The comment was widely condemned on social media while many said the use of the word “rigger” was clearly intentional and part of his “racist attacks” against the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Black woman prosecuting the case against him.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump’s former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah weighed in on the matter, describing the use of the term as “a bullhorn”.

“With Trump, you don’t need to look for a dogwhistle – it’s a bullhorn when it comes to race, and I do think that’s deliberate,” Ms Farah told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday.

“We’ve seen the, I mean, slanderous attacks that he’s put out against Fani Willis. You know, alleging things I won’t even repeat, so he’s not really hiding that he’s going to lean into that element and this is, you know, taking place just outside of Atlanta. When you saw the courtroom, it was a lot of Black men and women who were serving in that courtroom.”

While Ms Farah said that Mr Trump knows exactly what he’s doing in using the “disgusting” term, she said she was somewhat surprised.

“The fact that he’s introducing race into this prosecution surprises me, it’s disgusting, it’s textbook Donald Trump, but it comes as no surprise,” she said.

Her comments come after Keith Boykin, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton, said that “the use of the word ‘rigger’ is not unintentional”.

“It’s not an accident after spending days making racist attacks against Fani Willis, the Black woman leading the prosecution against him in Atlanta,” he said.

Whether or not Mr Trump intended to describe his political enemies using a word that is one letter away from being an exceptionally offensive slur is unclear. What is clear is that plenty of observers noted his use of the word.

Arieh Kovler, a current affairs and politics writer, collected a sampling of responses from a group of Trump supporters who post anonymously at a Reddit-like forum.

"I don't know if Trump deliberately uses 'RIGGERS!' as a dog-whistle, but his supporters hear it either way," he wrote. “Worth noting here that the ‘riggers’ as a racist codeword has been used for a while in MAGA circles.”

Mr Kovler included a screenshot from the site showing one user who said "I love [Trump] so much" because "he just used the word RIGGERS!"

In other posts, supporters made clear they were not discussing alleged election manipulators while using the word. Similar responses could be found on Twitter when searching about Mr Trump’s use of the word.

Mr Trump making racist-adjacent remarks is hardly novel. During his presidency he reportedly questioned why the US would allow Haitians and African immigrants to cross the border, referring to their homes as "s***hole countries."

His niece, Mary Trump, has stated publicly that she heard the former president use racial slurs growing up and claimed racism was normal for his family.

And he has given special nicknames for his Black opponents — like calling New York Attorney General "peekaboo James," which may or may not be a reference to a racist insult aimed at Black people.

He also called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg an "animal" and a "criminal" who works for George Soros. He called both Ms James and Mr Bragg "racists" and extended that charge to the woman leading Georgia's case against him, DA Willis. Ms Williams is Black, and Mr Trump has baselessly accused her of having an affair with a "gang member" she was prosecuting.

“They say there’s a young woman, a young racist in Atlanta. She’s a racist. And they say, I guess they say that she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member,” Mr Trump said in his remarks to a group of veterans on 8 August. “And this is the person that wants to indict me. She’s got a lot of problems.”

In contrast, when referring to DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, the white litigator leading the federal government's case against Mr Trump, the former president refers to him as "psycho" and "unhinged."

Mr Trump has denied all accusations of being racist.

On Monday, Mr Trump and 18 of his closest allies were hit with a sweeping 41-count indictment, over their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Charged under Georgia’s RICO statute, the 19 defendants are accused of running a criminal enterprise with the goal of ensuring that Mr Trump remained in power at all costs.

The other co-defendants are: former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, attorneys John Eastman, Kenneth Cheseboro, Jenna Ellis, Ray Smith III, and Robert Cheeley, former US Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, former Trump campaign official Michael Roman, former state senator and the former chair of the Georgia Republican Party David Schafer, Georgia state senator Shawn Still, Lutheran pastor Stephen Lee, mixed martial artist Harrison Floyd, Kanye West’s former PR Trevian Kutti, former head of the Republican Party in Coffee County Cathleen Latham, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall, and former election supervisor of Coffee County Misty Hampton.

DA Willis has spent more than two years investigating efforts by Mr Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in the crucial swing state.

The investigation came following the release of a 2 January 2021 phone call Mr Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he told him to “find” enough votes to change the outcome of the election in the state.

Mr Biden won the state by less than 12,000 votes.

The investigation then expanded from that phone call to include a scheme whereby a group of fake Republican electors planned to falsely certify the results in Mr Trump’s favour instead of Mr Biden’s. The plot failed and the fake electors have since reached immunity deals with DA Willis’ office.

Ms Willis said she would like to try the defendants altogether and within the next six months.

In total, the former president is now facing 91 charges from four separate criminal cases.

On 1 August, he was hit with a federal indictment charging him with four counts over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, following an investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith’s office.

This came after Mr Smith’s office charged Mr Trump in a separate indictment over his alleged mishandling of classified documents on leaving office.

Back in April, Mr Trump was charged for the first time with New York state charges following an investigation into hush money payments made prior to the 2016 election.