Hang on, before we give him credit for decency, remember that he only said it because it personally affects him. He has a black son. He knows firsthand what minorities experience and how policing is systemically racist. He saw the video of George Floyd’s murder and could imagine his son suffer a similar fate. His reaction was exactly what you would expect from any father. It’s not progressivism or decency, but self defense. All conservatives are inherently narcissistic. They support the conservative ideals that benefit themselves, and are radically progressive on any issue where the status quo does not benefit themselves.

Or to put it another way, Conservativism has exactly one priority: self. It is egocentrism in the guise of stoic protection of the status quo. This becomes obvious the very moment a conservative does not benefit from the status quo, and they wish to change the world to improve their own standing in it.

There is no hypocrisy in conservativism because there is no objective standard or ideology beyond protecting and promoting the self, and the self is whatever conservatives decide exists within the self. The self is good, and the other is bad. Everything else is negotiable.

To someone who is not conservative, this looks like hypocrisy. See: The only Moral Abortion is My Abortion, or The Card Says Moops, or Gun Control for Black Panthers, or My Daughter is a LGBTQ+ so now LGBTQ+ are People, or It isn’t “Drag” when I do it, or But my state deserves FEMA Funding, or Regulate this industry because it is a threat to me, or My sex scandal is a private matter so please respect my privacy, or Election fraud exists and I’ll prove it, or I’m a job creator so please bail me out, or just take literally any conservative talking point and you will find conservatives who are suddenly the exception to their own rule.

That’s the feature of conservativism that is so appealing. It’s like having a personal God that will forgive any transgression as long as you believe and pray for forgiveness. Being part of the self is like a warm blanket, and as long as you agree to maintain the farce, you get to stay under its protection.

This isn’t new information. Conservatives have always existed, under different banners and with different definitions of the self. Trump has laid bare the grift, abusing it past the point of credibility. That’s his hold, that to oust Trump is to abandon the ruse, and conservatives can’t do that. That’s why they will try very hard to make him a member of the Other. They will claim they were duped, that he was a secret Democrat, that he was never one of them. But he was always one of them, even when he was a Democrat.