On Sunday, a few moments after Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, told a crowd of mourners at a memorial service for her husband that she forgave his killer and asked everyone to lean into love, the current president of the United States told that same crowd that he hates his opponents and doesn’t want the best for them.
These comments came a day after Donald Trump, speaking at a Cornerstone Institute event, referred to former President Joe Biden as “a stupid guy,” and a “mean son of a bitch.” Then, just to make sure we all understood that there is no bottom, Trump said of the former president, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer earlier this year: “How’s it working for him? Not working so well for him right now, is it? So, when you start feeling sorry for him, remember that he’s a bad guy.”
In the same speech, Trump repeated a line that he’s used many, many times during his presidency: “Democrats hate this country.”
This time, Trump said it in reference to Democrats refusing to ignore the Constitution or court orders when dealing with immigration laws and our political asylum process, and instead insist that proper processes be followed and the immigration laws be amended by Congress. Or, to put that in Trump-speak: “They allowed criminals and bad people to pour into our country unchecked because they hate America.”
He has also referred to his political opponents as “vermin,” which is literally stealing a line from the Nazis.
Of the immigrants who have arrived in this country and now call it home, Trump has said that they are “poisoning the blood” of America. That, too, is a throwback to Nazi Germany.
When asked to define his political opponents, Trump said last year that he was concerned about the “enemy from within,” and then specifically spoke of “radical left lunatics.” In the same comments, he talked openly of using the U.S. military to go after some of those “enemies from within.”
Late last year, an NPR investigation found that Trump had issued more than 100 threats against his perceived enemies—his fellow citizens who disagree with him politically—and those threats grew increasingly darker and more ominous.
I’m bringing all of this up for two reasons.
First, there has been a lot of talk in recent days about the tone of political discourse in this country and who might be responsible for the increasingly violent rhetoric. There are many clever ways I could beat around the bush and hint at the answer.
But it’s Trump.
Trump is responsible. He has been responsible from the start of his awful, embarrassing, hate-filled political career that leaned from the very start on racism and bigotry and has only gotten worse. Every single piece of it has been deplorable and disgusting and designed to make scapegoats of the world’s most vulnerable and this country’s most needy.
And each time anyone has dared call him out on his degradation of the office of president, he has sought not to be better or do better, but to instead sink lower. To threaten violence. To proclaim them anti-American. To label them as “bad guys” or “the enemy of the country,” as he’s referred to the media relentlessly.
And that brings me to the second reason I’m bringing up just a few of Trump’s many, many awful comments and actions: we’re quickly approaching the tipping point.
Over the course of the last few weeks, Trump has made it abundantly clear that there is no limitation to the power he seeks or the tactics that he will use to obtain it. That includes openly weaponizing the Department of Justice, other government agencies and excusing violence that originates from people he likes.
Over the weekend, we were all treated to a social media post from Trump in which he encouraged the attorney general to prosecute a prosecutor from Georgia who brought an indictment against Trump for election interference. (Not for nothing here, but we all know Trump committed election interference. It’s not even a question.)
This came on the heels of yet another network late-night host losing his gig (albeit temporarily, it appears) because the network execs believed not punishing the host for jabs at Trump would lead to a merger deal being killed by a Trump-controlled government agency.
And in between those two, there was an interview in which Trump said of political violence that originates from the right (where it most often does): “I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming here. And we don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’”
This is the president, I’ll remind you, and not your loopy uncle that’s half in the bag at the family get-together.
These are problems. Big ones. And it’s past time that a bunch of boot-licking Republicans, and Republican voters, stopped downplaying it and acting as if it’s business as usual. It’s not.
The president and his enablers already have the military marching through American streets, masked government agents abducting people, including citizens, at gunpoint with flimsy, if any, cause, and is publicly pushing the AG to prosecute his political rivals. That’s on top of just the normal lunacy, like putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of America’s health department and two podcasters in charge of the FBI.
Wake up. This is serious. People will die. Maybe even the entire country.
