Just yesterday, he retweeted a guy calling for Democrats to die. "Well, not literally of course"... wink wink.
He's really not a mastermind genius playing 4-D Chess. He is openly calling for violence, and has already inspired terrorists to mail bombs to prominent politicians, and people are choosing to play dumb about how evil he is.
People are choosing to grant him deniability even when it is rather implausible because (insofar as race is relevant, there's other things that work similar for some that aren't race-related) they are white racists and his deniability on that point is also their deniability when he is speaking to their interests.