As if he didn’t have enough on his mind in late summer, President Trump has called on two professional sports teams to revert to their former names — which unfortunately sound to many ears like racial slurs.

Is Trump just looking for trouble? Or is he whipping up controversy to direct attention away from other trouble that he is in?

On Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, Trump called on the NFL’s Washington Commanders and MLB’s Cleveland Guardians to go back to the team names they used before they rebranded in response to complaints about the use of Native American names and imagery.

Referring to the Washington team, Trump posted, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.” Moreover, he wrote, “Cleveland should do the same with the Cleveland Indians.” Ah, the old one-two punch, bigotry and extortion.

For fun Trump added, “MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!” Right. Somehow, I don’t expect indigenous Americans to be impressed by his demand.

But I suspect this interlude is merely a message to his followers to remind them what binds the MAGA movement together. Trump has freed them from the need to consider the feelings of people of other races and nations. Trump has also willingly used the power of the presidency to attack the bureaucracy, the universities, the media, the arts — all of them full of “elitists” who have sought to impose their views on speech and thought about race. Trump has the power, in word and deed, to hurt these people and institutions, and he glories in doing so.

That is the message to MAGA of these posts. But why now?

Trump is trying to move the news cycle past the mysteries surrounding the late Jeffrey Epstein. More news has emerged tying him to the late financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in prison nearly six years ago.

The Epstein story took an unexpected turn earlier this month when the Justice Department announced that it would not release the so-called Epstein files, despite the fact that Trump surrogates had spent months, and in some cases years, making lurid promises to do so.

Then, the Wall Street Journal reported that a risque birthday letter sent to Epstein in 2003 bore Trump’s sexually suggestive signature. Trump went ballistic, suing the Journal, its owners and the reporters for $10 billion, contending that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

However, he sounded a bit more muted after the Journal’s subsequent report that Trump was briefed by his attorney general, Pam Bondi, in May that his name appears multiple times in FBI documents related to the Epstein case.

This is a grave vulnerability for Trump. A nontrivial segment of the MAGA movement is rebelling at his attempts to quash publication of the “files.” Trump in turn is accusing these people of being “duped” by Democrats.