Last Thursday, CNN host Don Lemon said, “The president of the United States is racist.”

This rightful attack on President Trump, after he questioned during an immigration meeting with legislators in the Oval Office why the United States takes people in from “s-hole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations, rather than people from Norway, rings true now more than ever before.

The entirely unsubtle takeaway from the president’s comment should be this: Donald Trump is the demagogic, intolerable leader of the free world, who, just like the bigoted deplorables that energize his supremacist rabble-rousing, look down upon black people, Latinos, and all people of color, not only in their contributions to American society, but in their presence in the United States.

There is no way around it: in a presidency that has accelerated away from truth and reason, morality and virtue, and tolerance and forbearance at a blistering pace, this is without a doubt the lowest possible hole that Trump could fall through, and combined with the revolting fact that the White House did not deny that Trump used the slur, saying that, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “The president’s ‘s-hole’ remark is being received much differently inside of the White House than it is outside of it,” makes it crystal-clear that staffers inside the administration are appreciative of the insult because it will reason with the president’s base.

Trump race-baits, well, because it is part of his political and moral agenda, and, for no good reason, it worked. He was sued in 1973 by the Justice Department for preventing black people from looking to rent apartments. He championed the “birther” campaign against former President Barack Obama. To kick off his presidential campaign, Trump called Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals.” He attacked the Muslim family of a Gold Star recipient. He declared black NFL players who kneel during the national anthem as “sons of b’s [expletive deleted].” He said that Neo-Nazi groups who violently protested in Charlottesville, Va. contained “some very fine people.”

And he became, and still is, the president of the United States.

It is not outrageous, nor radical, to assume that Trump is a self-absorbed brat. However, it is outrageous, and radical, to assume that Trump is purely, at heart, a racist. The latter should not be assumed – it is clear fact.

In the wake of Trump’s gaff, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that the president’s comments were “unfortunate” and “unhelpful.” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) said that accusations that Trump is a racist “don’t fit with the president I know.” It continues to astound me the sheer pettiness and unbridled hypocrisy of Republican elected officials who continue to put party over country and stand behind a floundering reality TV star president who is, in turn, exceedingly smearing the face of an already damaged party. Their thin-skinnedness needs to be confronted and attacked, profusely. Republicans have done nothing, and will continue to do nothing, in holding Trump accountable for his words.

Come 2020, it should not be Oprah Winfrey’s job to dethrone Trump. The dethroning of this egomaniacal lost man should come well before that. If the threat of impeachment ever rises in the near future, House and Senate members should, without hesitation, vote to dump Trump. It is no longer a question of political agenda or power anymore – it is a question of morality and goodness. But, Republicans will always look toward and try to answer the former.

Racism is the very fabric of Trumpism. It has been said over and over again. It is not a novel, groundbreaking analysis of the ideology. Racism is etched into Trump’s inseparable bond with his supporters, and when he utters these derogatory and hateful comments, Trump is only echoing what every member of his base is thinking. He is a showman, and he knows how to play the part of the angry white American to a tee. Yet, Trump continues to say, like he says whenever he is accused of being something that is not to his liking, that he is “the least racist person you have ever met.”

Well, the moral American constituency has met the real Donald Trump. They have known him for a very long time.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I hope Republicans will remember his words: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”