In addition to dozens of criminal charges in four criminal indictments, former President Donald Trump also stands accused of repeatedly employing "racist dog whistles" in his constant critiques against the prosecutors who filed some of those charges, according to a Washington Post op-ed.

The article from Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler, himself a former federal prosecutor, carries on the leftist tradition of recent years to imply the existence of racist motives and undertones in any criticism uttered by Trump against any opponent who happens to be a minority.

In reality, however, it has long been standard fare for Trump to launch blistering and insult-laden critiques against those who oppose him politically or prosecutorially, regardless of race, and it is those who incessantly focus on skin color or hear imaginary "dog whistles" in everything he says who are the ones with a racial problem.

Those focused intently on race will always hear "racist dog whistles"

Butler's WaPo op-ed highlighted that three of the four major prosecutors pressing criminal and civil cases against former President Trump -- Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and New York Attorney General Letitia James -- are black.

"These are historic cases, and the race of the people bringing them shouldn’t matter -- except it clearly matters to Donald Trump, who has lambasted them all using racist dog whistles," he wrote and proceeded to provide a few examples of supposedly racist attacks and insults.

Butler is certainly not alone in leveling the racism charge against Trump in response to his critical remarks about the prosecutors arrayed against him, as the Associated Press made similar accusations in August, specifically that his "relentless attacks" on prosecutors were "often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists."

Like in Butler's piece, the AP sought to impart racial motivations and undertones to Trump's attacks against those prosecutors who are also minorities and who seek to imprison him or, in the case of AG James, utterly destroy the business empire he spent decades building.

"The rhetoric is a reminder of Trump’s tendency to use coded racial messaging as a signal to supporters, an approach he has deployed over several decades as he evolved from a New York City real estate tycoon to a reality television star and, eventually, the president," the AP asserted. "Even if he doesn’t explicitly employ racial slurs, his language recalls America’s history of portraying Black people as not fully human."

Trump's attacks are a problem because of security concerns, not racial ones

Yet, even as Butler carried on with his accusatory op-ed against former President Trump, he glossed over an acknowledgment of the truth as he wrote, "the former president harbors no love for any investigator or prosecutor focused on him. But Trump reserves a particularly race-inflected venom for the Black government lawyers who threaten his liberty and wealth."

The first part of that statement is the truth -- as evidenced by a 2019 NBC News article focused on the predominately white prosecutorial team assembled under then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller who were often subject to being railed against and insulted by the then-president -- that is so typically overlooked or flat-out ignored, as it doesn't fit the "Trump is a racist" narrative.

To be sure, Trump's critical attacks against the prosecutors facing him -- as well as judges at the federal and state levels -- can be problematic at times and occasionally toe the line, not with regard to "racist dog whistles" but rather the safety from harm of those members of the judicial system.

Indeed, a Time magazine article published around the same time in August as the AP's screed shone a light on the rising "security concerns" that stemmed from an increase in threats made against any and all of the prosecutors and judges who were going after the former president.

Trump is an equal-opportunity offender

As noted, former President Trump has a long history of making personal attacks and insults against anybody who opposes him, whether they be prosecutors and judges or politicians and journalists.

The fact that some of those opponents that Trump harshly criticizes also happen to be minorities don't automatically make those attacks racially motivated or prove that Trump is a racist, as anybody who has objectively paid attention knows that Trump is an equal-opportunity offender who will go after anybody in his way regardless of political correctness about their race or any other demographic characteristic.