“Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor”
THAT is the quote. He didn’t say “be proud of being called a racist”.
“Let them call you racists” was akin to “sticks and stones”.
That’s the typical distortion that you have to watch out for.
Some southern historical society wants to preserve a statue of Robert E. Lee in a town in Virginia. They apply for and get a permit to march. A bunch of anti-fa yahoos and Nazis also show up and turn the whole thing into a free-for-all and someone gets killed. Trump says that there are fine people on both sides of the issue, and an info-babe interprets that to mean he’s calling the Nazis “fine people”. Everyone runs with it.
This is predictable. The MSM wants to mis-quote and misunderstand. It’s what they do. You have to plan for a counter that blows them out of the water. It doesn’t help to keep saying they’re misquoting you.