No, his tone isn't like that.
Morrissey didn't call them a subspecies, he was expressing incredulity at how cruel their treatment of animals is. Which it is. Sentiment is bourgeois. It was Ideological.
Trump does it persistently to rile their government as a leadership strategy. The same way other leaders call America Great Satan or Americans fat & stupid.
Except he did. He also expressed the wish that
China be bombed. As
@Worm put it
"Could it be that maybe everyone read the comment and took it as (a) an exaggeration, per Morrissey's usual mode of speech and (b) recognized that Morrissey's dislike of China was founded
solely and entirely on the fact that someone told him skinning cats and dogs was a national industry, and not racism?"
Recognizing that it's hyperbole is different than denying he said it though. In the case of the "subspecies" comment he used a word that may have been purposely chosen to gain attention and that he knew would be offensive. It's literally racist language and a little harder to dismiss than the "come, come, nuclear bomb" part of this quote.
"I would go to wherever there seemed to be interest - except China, which is too barbaric. In China, as we all now know, cats and dogs are skinned alive for the fur industry. Come, come, nuclear bomb."
So you can say he's not a racist, that he said it for a specific purpose, but getting into the "one can't help but feel" part is very weak. If someone says "one can't help but feel" before they insult you did they not just insult you? Were they really dealing with their feelings and their inability to reconcile them with their beliefs? It's a little more subtle than "Chinese are a subspecies" minus the cushion but he literally said those words in that order and later when given a chance to explain he doubled down on it.
I believe you've also said that he was emotional at the time or not quite in control of his words he happened to choose a very specific term that he hasn't said publicly before or since. It's an insult to say he didn't know what he was doing.