From suggesting on his first day as presidential candidate back in 2015 that Mexico was intentionally sending “rapists” to

America to calling for several liberal congresswomen of colour to “go back” to their countries, president trump has
repeatedly used racial and racist language over the past 4 years. In doing so he managed to what scholars describe as white
identity politics, attracting support from those who are wary of the growing population of who are not white or Christian,
as well as those who have negative views about groups of people like black people and Muslims. Trump has used identity
politics to his advantage and in doing so he managed to persuade the majority white community who wanted to “make
America great again” to vote for him. The quote “make America great again” simply meant that America should get rid of
other races and ethnicities from America.

The way trump talked about identity issues probably did help him win the 2016 republican primary. I read about the
research of UC Irvine’s Michael Tesler and George Washington University’s John Sides and in their research, they found out
that hat Republican voters who felt a strong sense of white racial identity and believed that whites were being unfairly
discriminated against were more likely to back Trump than other GOP voters during the primaries. Trump also did well with
voters who were very concerned about immigration—he was by far the most popular candidate among republican voters
who said that immigration was the most important issue to them, according to exit polls conducted during the 2016 GOP
primaries. He did not have such big advantages on other issues. It seems that even in today’s society theirs a clear divide
between different races. Politics uses this racial divide for their own advantage.

Research link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2018.1441849