Take Roger Stone at his word. You know which word I mean

Stone is a mirror to Trump. Once you imagine how a President Biden might have dealt with this, it becomes clear

Over the weekend, convicted felon Roger Stone (his nonexistent time served notwithstanding) made news in a most unfortunate way. During a live interview with Morris W. O’Kelly, who is Black, Stone was asked why he was fortunate enough to have his sentence commuted by the president, when so many other prisoners were being “treated unfairly daily.” Stone could have predicted the question, of course, but he definitely did not want to answer it. In what sounded, from the recording, to be an aside, Stone muttered a sentence that was not fully captured by the microphone. Here’s what was: “arguing with that Negro.” Despite the recording, Stone immediately denied having used the word.

Roger Stone is such a close confidant of the president that his prison sentence was commuted before it even began. Stone was convicted on seven criminal counts, which included lying to federal investigators and witness tampering, all of which were the culmination of a case that revolved around the 2016 presidential election. Stone was always the president’s henchman. But did we know how deep those ties ran? Peeling back Stone’s layers—revealing his true racism in a nationally available recording, for instance—is a mirror held up to the president, too. Were this not Bizarro World, the president might have come out with a sane statement, distancing himself from a man who called a Black radio host a Negro on a recorded program. The dilettante, it turns out, has no clothes.

Instead, Trump has remained a background lurker, as he always does when racism arises, because to call it out is to reckon with his own relationship to it. Stone is his mirror, his own creation, his comrade-in-arms, the very company he keeps. Like every other instance of racism that has cropped up over the course of the past painful years, this one has been one more wasted opportunity for the president, yet another circumstance in which Trump has done nothing to resolve a nation’s palpable sicknesses.

None of this is surprising, and, to some of the president’s supporters, some of this dog whistling may actually be an enticement. It is for that reason that I prefer to envision a different narrative, wherein the world is not tipped on its axis and the person occupying the Oval Office actually defends the best qualities of being an American citizen, while decrying the worst ones. In just a few months, Americans will head to the polls to decide the future. What would a president Biden have done in the face of a Roger Stone moment like this past Saturday’s? Would he have allowed a blanket of silence to overtake the airwaves? Would he have chosen companionship over righteousness? Or would he have stood up for decency, irrespective of the cost?

I believe in taking people at their word. I take Roger Stone at his word, for instance. His words burrow deep. He is a man who believes what he says, and what he says is racist. These words are impossible to deny: they are captured on tape for anyone with the time and energy to listen. I take the president at his word, too. I take him at his word when he offers no solution for racial equality and I take him at his word when his word is absent, an abyss in response to the racist behavior of his friends, colleagues, and admirers.

I take Joe Biden—with hope, the 46^th president of the United States of America—at his word, too. On May 31^st, the former vice president penned a response to the organized protests that had cropped up across the country as a reaction to the brutal death of George Floyd. “We must and will get to a place where everyone, regardless of race, believes that ‘to protect and serve’ means to protect and serve them,” Joe Biden wrote. “Only by standing together will we rise stronger than before. More equal, more just, more hopeful — and that much closer to our more perfect union.” I believe these words, and I believe that if Biden were president today, Roger Stone’s behavior would not have disappeared into a vacuum, where it is still regarded as acceptable to some, though not all.

It is worth noting that this culture of tolerating the worst among us can—and will—change. We can excise the tumor, and, moving forward, we must choose the leaders who we can take at their word.