“There is a clear pattern here, Mick,” Chris Wallace says and goes on to describe Donald Trump’s dehumanizing language directed always at people who happen not to have white skin. “Infested. It sounds like vermin. It sounds subhuman. And these are all six Members of Congress who are people of color.”

Mick Mulvaney responds: “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines.”

Wallace: “I’m not reading between the lines. I’m reading the lines.”

Mulvaney scrambles to divert attention from the pattern of Trump’s smears by raising the possibility that if Adam Schiff had criticized Trump’s border policies, then Trump could be directing these comments at Schiff.

Wallace interjects: “I don’t think he’d be talking about his crime-infested, rodent-infested district.”

Mulvaney plows ahead, insisting that if Trump were directing these insults at Schiff, this would not be because Schiff is Jewish.

Mulvaney: “This is what the President does. He fights. And he’s not wrong to do so.”

Mulvaney continues talking, still diverting attention from Trump’s vilification of black and brown Members of Congress and minority Congressional districts. Sticking to (the non-existent, but hypothetically possible) criticism of Schiff, Mulvaney castigates California: “The richest state in the nation. The richest state in the nation has abject poverty like that. A state, by the way, dominated for generations by Democrats.”

Mulvaney’s audience of one may have found this defense convincing. Then again, Mulvaney’s comments might be aimed much more broadly (“… Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.”).