I’m sure you guys picked up on this. President Trump held a White House ceremony to honor the WWII Navajo Code Talkers. We all saw how that turned out, a fawning, cloying, stomach turning, patronizing performance that quickly degenerated into an unprovoked attack on Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren. No surprises there, eh? It won’t be the first time the Trumpster has perverted a solemn and noble moment to further one of his personal feuds and prejudices.

But several observers also picked up on the fact that prominent in the field of view of the video cameras documenting the awards was a painting of Andrew Jackson, ‘Ole Hickory’, the Indian fighter himself, the dead President on the $20 bill infamous for his warfare and persecution of native Americans in the 19th century. You would think that someone would have had the presence of mind to remove that portrait for the ceremony, or at least, to alter the staging of the event, so that a historical figure now perceived as a persecutor of the Indians not be prominently displayed in a ceremony honoring Indian war heroes.

It is tempting to think that this is just stupidity, not malice. Surely, no one on the President’s staff is so incompetent and insensitive to allow this to happen. People do make mistakes in affairs of protocol, but this one is a real boner. It is downright unforgivable. No, this was planned.

My cousin Rudy called me and we discussed the enormity of this faux pas, the sheer bad taste of it, and we agreed that it had to be deliberate, not mere incompetence. Surely, even the clueless Trump White House staff would have realized that hanging Jackson’s picture there would have insulted every Indian tuned in to see their heroes being honored.

Rudy felt it was a Trump “dog whistle”, a disguised slur against a minority, a calculated moment of political incorrectness designed to slam minorities and curry favor among the Deplorable base. I disagreed, but not because I think the Strumpets are incapable of such barbarity, but because Aboriginal Americans are not one of the Right Wing’s standby evil minorities (there simply aren’t enough of them to merit Conservative hatred), as opposed to say, blacks, Mexicans, Muslims or intellectuals. Besides, Deplorables are too dim to pick up on something so subtle. They are incapable of seeing a painting as anything except mere decoration.

No, I’m inclined to be a bit more charitable to the Trumpsters than Cousin Rudy. I don’t think the Donald has anything against the First Nations of North America. But I think someone on the White House PR staff assigned to staging these feel-good photo-ops was perfectly aware of the optics of this affair, and either arranged it deliberately, or simply said or did nothing to stop it. It was a calculated effort to make Trump look like a fool and a bigot. And it worked, whether it was deserved (in this instance) or not.

We’ve all heard of the Trump White House being a cesspool of courtly intrigue and treachery, if not downright careerist disloyalty and treason. Its incidents like this that only serve to confirm those suspicions.