Conservative columnist claims Trump is victim of racist attacks -- links mass shootings to 'identity politics'

Donald Trump ruthlessly attacked The Squad -- four young lawmakers of color -- throughout the summer, directing them to go back to their home countries even though all four are U.S. citizens.

In response, Republicans continued to largely rally around the president despite his loud and unapologetic racist rhetoric.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Heather Mac Donald says that Trump himself is a victim of racist attacks.

In a story headlined "Trump Isn’t the One Dividing Us by Race," Mac Donald claims that "He hardly mentions it, while his adversaries are obsessed with ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege.’"

"It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity," Mac Donald claims.

Like many conservatives, MacDonald lays the blame on academia. "America’s universities deserve credit for this double standard," she writes.

"Identity politics dominate higher education: Administrators, students and faculty obsessively categorize themselves and each other by race. “White privilege,” often coupled with “toxic masculinity,” is the focus of freshmen orientations and an ever-growing array of courses."

She also argues that the embrace of identity politics will naturally lead white people to embrace their white identity. "If “whiteness” is a legitimate topic of academic and political discourse, some individuals are going to embrace “white identity” proudly," Mac Donald claims.

The columnist, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, also suggests that identity politics might increase the likelihood of mass violence.

"To note the inevitability of white identity politics in no way condones the grotesque violence of men like the El Paso killer," she says. "But the dominant culture is creating a group of social pariahs, a very small percentage of whom—already unmoored from traditional sources of meaning and stability, such as family—are taking their revenge through stomach-churning mayhem," Mac Donald argues.

"Overcoming racial divisiveness will be difficult. But the primary responsibility rests with its main propagators: the academic left and its imitators in politics and mass media."