But let’s not kid ourselves. Nobody was surprised. Trump didn’t give us any new data on who he is, only additional confirmation of the ancient data on who he is. We have every right to be shocked and amazed at what he said but not that he said it. Racist conduct has been a constant in his life as a recent Atlantic piece attests. It starts with the Trump family’s discriminatory rental practices throughout the 1970s and extends to his public campaign against the Central Park Five and continues through the “birther” claim he used against President Barack Obama. He sympathized with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, said a judge could not hear a civil case against him because he was a Mexican American, and recently asked why the United States couldn’t attract more immigrants from Norway and fewer from “shithole” countries.

If Trump were a stock traded on Wall Street, you would say that racism is fully discounted into his price. Asking Trump to abandon his racism is like asking Ford to stop building cars. It’s integral to his psyche. Asking him to apologize won’t work, either. He never apologizes because he thinks it makes him look weak. And criticizing Trump will only accelerate him in the direction he was already headed, as he showed Monday at a White House event.