In 2009, Janet Napolitano, former President Barack Obama’s homeland security secretary, announced a study of right-wing violence like the Oklahoma City terror bombing. But after Rush Limbaugh furiously condemned what he called a “Big Sis terror list,” she apologized and suspended the probe.

Get ready for two polar responses to the political murders in Minnesota. Of course, accused killer Vance Boelter will receive his due process rights in a court of law. But in the separate court of public opinion, this time Democrats and the mainstream media should not be cowed by Limbaugh’s progeny as they indignantly deny the truth about President Donald Trump’s vocabulary of violence.

Trump has long deployed militant language to look like a strongman. He has effectively created a permission structure for political violence from his ads that urged the execution of the Central Park Five (who later had their convictions vacated)… support for China’s massacre at Tiananmen Square…embrace of dictators…sending Marines into an American city…ICE arrests a judge, a mayor, a congresswoman, and a NYC comptroller.

There is the incendiary language at rallies (“I’d like to punch him in the nose”)…pardons of convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists…and his ongoing barrage of insults of political opponents (“Marxists, scum, thugs, animals”) that were followed by mass murders in El Paso, Pittsburgh and Buffalo by gunmen quoting him.

“Rhetoric like this has consequences," said Timothy J. Heaphy, the top staffer at the House Jan. 6 Committee; “politicians think it’s just rhetoric but people take it seriously.” Based on his years running the FBI’s counterintelligence program, Frank Figliuzzi agrees. Trump’s language “may lead to violence because his rants at rallies embolden white hate groups and racist blogs.” While not grounds for a criminal referral, they add up to what scholars call “stochastic terrorism,” when a demagogue knowingly creates an atmosphere of menace likely to trigger armed allies.

The result of this political strategy of, as Trump admitted to Bob Woodward, “fear”? It chills free speech, contributes to the tragedy that gun violence is the leading cause of death for children 1-17 and triggers hundreds of death threats that fill the in-boxes of prosecutors, judges and politicians who challenge him.

Indeed, Ex-Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Don Bacon report that GOP colleagues have privately admitted to changing their votes out of fear of harm to themselves and their families. Sen. Lisa Murkowski admits, “We are all afraid.”

Has this happened since the 1856 caning of abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner? Yet commentary to date laments growing political violence generally but flinches at holding accountable a president who winks at the Proud Boys and brags that he’s “supported by the police, military and Bikers for Trump — the tough people.”

Defensive Trumpers reply that violence has occurred on both sides of the aisle. That’s technically true. But blaming Democrats as a party was accurate of the Confederate South before and after the Civil War but surely not since the realignment of the region from D to R after the 1960s Civil Rights laws.

And the whataboutism of finding a current example is little more than trying to compare elephants and fleas since both are in the animal kingdom. Yes, a Bernie Sanders voter shot Rep. Steve Scalise, but Sanders always condemns political violence and is not a gun nut coaxing it in his public life. The plural of examples is data. Ex-FBI director Christopher Wray testified under oath to a House Committee that white supremacists and Far Right vigilantism were responsible for nearly 80% of all political violence.

Already, MAGAs en masse are simply claiming the shooter’s a Democrat and a once-respected conservative like Sen. Mike Lee has called him a “Marxist.”…a marxist who voted for Trump and targeted 45 Democrats, shooting four and killing two? Other Republicans, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin, feign outrage since “they” tried to assassinate President Trump when the young man who did so was a registered Republican. Who exactly is the “they” — Nancy Pelosi? Chuck Schumer? Joe Biden? — other than a modern version of McCarthyism?

Historically, presidents have more often been the victims than perpetrators of violence. Until now. It’s past time for the loyal opposition and honest journalists to condemn Trump’s proven itch for chaos and remember the axiom of Aldous Huxley that “Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.”

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Green was the first New York City public advocate and has published a couple dozen books on policy and politics, including most recently “The Inflection Election: Progress or Extremism in 2024?“

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