In my circles there was a lot of reaction, as it seemed to be a Freudian slip as to how racist the man is. It's seemed instead the media rather wanted to protect him for some post-trumpian political reason.

Trying to interpret a word transposition from a senile old man in any direction at all is just kind of sad, in my view.

But of course, some people are so coddled by modernity and their social media bubbles that they implicitly think racism is all about choice of vocabulary or other completely superficial things.