Donald Trump did not normalize racism. The moment Barack Obama became President, nearly every white man in the nation had an existential crisis. The ones in Congress and the Senate were particularly discomfited. If you are accustomed to believing that black competence ends before white competence begin, then having a man of color in charge of the Free World puts you in a world of hurt, and they're not going down without a fight.

Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan bit off America's nose in their continued attempts to spite Barack Obama's face. They didn't bother monitoring their own speech, and that gave millions of people, who were thinking it, but not saying it, permission to say and do whatever racist thing they wanted.

When Donald Trump came along, he was a convenient figurehead for a ship that was already in sail. The real captains knew that they could do whatever they wanted--as long as they had Trump's face in front. He gets neither the blame nor the credit.