JAMESTOWN, Va. — A rather extraordinary experiment began on that searing-hot summer day in 1619 when 22 elected colonists gathered in a wooden church near the James River as the first representative body in the New World.
Four hundred years later to the day, President Donald Trump flew here Tuesday to celebrate the inauguration of what would become American democracy in lofty terms at a time when the state of American democracy feels to many to be perilous and even poisonous.
From a stage in a cathedral tent next to a replica of the Jamestown Settlement, Trump remained on his best behavior, sticking to the elevated if dutiful words in the script his staff gave him and praising the contributions of African Americans. But both before and after the ceremony, with no text or teleprompter to guide him, he once again opted for fiery denunciations of political opponents of color.
He tore into what he called “Democratic-run corrupt cities” like Baltimore and again targeted its congressman Elijah E. Cummings and another critic, the Rev. Al Sharpton. “Those people are living in hell in Baltimore,” he said, because taxpayer money “has been stolen and wasted by people like Elijah Cummings.”
It was the fourth consecutive day that he assailed Cummings, who has criticized Trump’s handling of detained migrants at the border and whose committee has authorized subpoenas that could be issued to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, who both serve on the White House staff.
But Trump denied that his attacks on Cummings, Sharpton and four Democratic congresswomen of color were racist or part of a considered strategy to mobilize his largely white base in next year’s election. “There’s no strategy,” he said. “I have no strategy. There’s zero strategy.”
Any hope that the anniversary of the Jamestown gathering would reinforce common American ideals over the country’s deep divisions was probably futile to begin with. Because of the president’s attacks, Virginia’s African American state legislators boycotted his appearance, calling him an “emblem of hate.”
One state lawmaker who did attend, Ibraheem Samirah, stood and interrupted the president’s speech, holding up a sign that said, “Go Back to Your Corrupted Home” and “Deport Hate.” Samirah, a Democratic state delegate and a Palestinian American, shouted: “Mr. President, you cannot send us back. Virginia is our home.” He was led out politely by police officers.
Trump made no response, nor did he refer to the broader controversy during his speech. Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates, later condemned the “disrespectful outburst” of Samirah. “It was not only inconsistent with common decency, it was also a violation of the rules of the House,” he wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s address was carefully molded along the lines of those given by other presidents at such occasions. Even as he paid tribute to that original House of Burgesses, he noted that this was also the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves brought to America in chains.
“Today, in honor, we remember every sacred soul who suffered the horrors of slavery and the anguish of bondage,” Trump said, adding, “In the face of grave oppression and grave injustice, African Americans have built, strengthened, inspired, uplifted, protected, defended and sustained our nation from its very earliest days.”
His critics, however, were not buying it. Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who delivered his own speech as part of Tuesday’s commemoration, said afterward that Trump does not fully understand the history of the country he governs.
“Trump leads by division, not unity,” Meacham said, “and he fails to see that we honor those who expand the American family, not those who constrict it.”
Trump has employed racist tropes repeatedly in recent weeks. He told four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to their home countries, even though three were born in the United States and the fourth was naturalized as a teenager. In the past several days, he assailed Cummings and his “rat and rodent infested” majority-black district and he targeted other rivals like Sharpton, who, he said on Twitter, “Hates Whites & Cops.”
Speaking with reporters Tuesday morning before leaving the White House for Jamestown, Trump focused on what he called Baltimore’s “tremendous corruption,” pinning it, without substantiation, on Cummings.
“I think that Rep. Cummings should take his Oversight Committee and start doing oversight on Baltimore,” Trump said.
Trump offered no evidence, but two of the past four Baltimore mayors have resigned amid scandal. The most recent, Catherine Pugh, quit in May after the FBI raided two of her homes while investigating her for profiting personally from city contracts with a hospital system.
The president denied that he was aggravating racial tensions, insisting that he is the “least racist person there is anywhere in the world.” He argued that he had helped African Americans through an economy that has pushed black unemployment to record lows and through legislation he signed overhauling the criminal justice system.
He asserted that he had been flooded with messages of appreciation from black residents of Baltimore and elsewhere. “The African American people have been calling the White House,” he said. “They have never been so happy about what a president has done.”
Many Americans see it differently. A new national poll released Tuesday showed that 51% think Trump is a racist, compared with 45% who said he is not. The results skew heavily along party lines — 86% of Democrats called him racist, while 91% of Republicans rejected that.
The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University from July 25-28, was one of several in recent days that offered a window into public views of the president’s approach. National polls conducted this month by USA Today/Ipsos, The Economist/YouGov and Fox News showed that half to two-thirds of Americans believe that telling someone to “go back” is a racist statement and that Trump’s statements “cross the line.”
Among those agreeing was the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which organized the boycott of elected members of the House of Delegates and the state Senate.
“It is impossible to ignore the emblem of hate and disdain that the president represents,” the caucus said in its statement. His “repeated attacks on black legislators and comments about black communities,” it said, made him “ill suited to honor and commemorate such a monumental period in history.”
Gov. Ralph Northam and many other white Democrats stayed away, too. But Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax, Virginia’s only African American statewide elected official and a Democrat, attended, saying the twin anniversaries “far supersede the petty and racist actions of the current occupant of the White House.”
In an essay posted on Medium, he wrote: “The bigoted words of the current president will thankfully soon be swept into the dustbin of history. Our democracy, born in Virginia, will live on.”
Virginia has been roiled by its own controversies this year. Northam has rebuffed widespread calls to resign after the discovery of a 1984 medical school yearbook that included on his personal page a picture of a man in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan robes. Northam at first admitted being in the photograph, then denied that he was.
The state’s attorney general, Mark R. Herring, also a Democrat, later admitted that he once wore blackface at a party as a college student. And Fairfax has been accused of sexual assault by two women.
As he took questions Tuesday morning, Trump had said he would be “shocked” if opponents of color declined to attend the event. “If that’s the case,” he said, “they’re fighting against their people.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.