First, it would go back to his refusal to admit that the Central Park Five are guilty despite revealed DNA evidence. Some might chalk this up to his inability to admit being wrong; but even if it is that, the optics are horrible. If he doesn't care enough to mediate between his stubbornness and social interpretations of his comments, then I'd say he contributes to a pattern of racism through which minorities are artificially and unfairly targeted.
Yet if this case had happened today (a gang of young men accused of raping and assaulting a woman into a coma) the feminists and leftists of today would do exactly what Donald Trump did. This sounds way more like some product of #BelieveTheVictim than racism. Sorry, not buying it.
Donald Trump is boorish and most boorish men turn into snowflakes when women are victimized. Gynocentrism etc.
Second, I would cite his strange attempts to avoid acknowledging David Duke during his election campaign. He said that he'd only learned who Duke was the day before (giving the interview, that is), despite the fact that he specifically denounced Duke back in 2000 while distancing himself from the Reform Party. So this weird little turn of events suggest at minimum that he wanted to avoid offending David Duke during the election so as to ensure a portion of his base. Even his condemnations since then have been so uncomfortable. He makes condemning racism look like trying not to hurl after chugging sour milk.
It's almost as if he thinks the Republican voter base is racist to a degree more hysterical than the Democrats think they are. The way he awkwardly answers or denounces things reminds me of when he was asked in an interview about the bible. It was obvious that he'd probably never read the fucking thing in his life but he had to do the whole song and dance.
So you might have a point about David Duke, though I think it has much more to do with Trump trying to secure as much of the white vote as is possible.
Nobody has ever to my knowledge argued that he is a moral or even an ethical man, he's a rich business man that has spent his whole life bribing and paying off every moderate Democrat and Republican's favourite politician after all.
Finally, I'd cite his conflicted positions toward the war on drugs. Opioid addiction disproportionately impacts white people, and Trump has spoken about this as a national crisis, something to be treated in a humanitarian fashion. Yet his commitment to "getting rid of the gangs" draws heavily on the fact that they transport and sell illegal drugs, which is suddenly no longer something to be treated humanely but to be targeted with violence. The ostensible logic here is that gangs are violent and need to be met with violence. Okay, sure--but what about the argument that gang violence would probably decrease if the war on drugs was ended? Why do white opioid addicts deserve humane treatment whilst black drug dealers deserve to be met with violence, all the while keeping drugs illegal and perpetuating more gang violence?
Black drug dealers? I don't believe Donald Trump said anything about blacks at all did he? You're simply inserting that in yourself, after all in poor white areas where meth runs rampart the dealers are also usually white.
I'm suspicious about what you just did there by making that racial.
As to the drug war, I don't know that America will end it anytime soon, nor will they elect a leader with enough guts to even suggest it. Hillary certainly wouldn't have made the move and Barrack Obama straight up laughed at a questioner who brought up marijuana legalization, so really Donald Trump is just following a long line of puritanical cowardice in the American top-tier politician environment.
Gangs are objectively more of a problem and a threat than opioid addicts, right off the back opioid addicts are usually solo actors are they not? Gangs by their nature require more heavy-handed tactics, regardless of what their criminal function is.
