You're just going to totally ignore the "My heart goes out to you guys"? with his palm in his chest?

I've seen behavior of a lot of people akin to someone would pejoratively refer to as "MAGA Types" / common conservatives. The absolute majority of them aren't welcoming of so deep /pol/ 4chan meme politicking or signaling. They likely won't take it too seriously, but they sure as hell won't cozy up to it.

When this happened there was no live reaction because people didn't interpret this as such. This has only became a thing later. And he did not even acknowledge the crazy accusations of him having intendedly done a salute, he did not "lean in to it". What on earth would he even gain from that?!

I don’t see even entertaining the idea of ‘he did it intentionally’ meaning if he "intentionally did a n** salute" as sincere. That’s just a painted-by-bias angle to come from, trying to move goal posts. Better be wary of the people who would instead engage in that.