I feel like the people who disagree with this are kinda playing dumb. I feel like he always talked about race in such a way that really felt like he was hinting at a white supremacist narrative. And him having black friends or agreeing with black people sometimes does not cancel that out.
Yes he was very intentional about calling them "blacks". I think he definitely wanted it to sound like a stand in for the n word. Anyone who thinks his consistent rhetorical choices were just a coincidence is too stupid to understand politics. And I mean he literally publicly endorsed white supremacist conspiracy theories, did he really need to spell it out any more clearly?