What did hard Left expect, after years of hateful anti-Trump rhetoric?

It's long been a staple of the stump speech for President Joe Biden to compare Donald Trump and his supporters to the Nazis, and his fellow Democrats and the liberal media eagerly amplify the ratcheted-up rhetoric.

Now, sadly but predictably, this kind of talk has gotten somebody killed.

Most people believe that killing Hitler would have been a good and moral act if it could have stopped the carnage he wrought. We even have a parlor game suggesting he was so evil he should have been killed as an infant. Comparing anyone to the Nazi dictator is a clear invitation to violence.

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The Democrats in their thirst for power and derangement over Trump just don’t care.

At 8 p.m. the night before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Biden posted on X, "Americans want a president, not a dictator." It isn't just Biden. For nearly a decade, Democrats have been ratcheting up the rhetoric and marching the nation towards this political violence. 

In 2018, Rep. Maxine Waters told supporters in an unhinged rant to publicly harass Trump administration members. "You tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere," Waters seethed. 

More recently in this election cycle, former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill went on MSNBC to say, and I am not making this up, that Trump is not only similar to Hitler and Mussolini, but more dangerous.

Meanwhile, The New Republic magazine just last week released a cover with a picture of a face that was half Hitler, half Trump. They might as well have been handing out ethical licenses to kill.

Throughout all of this time, conservatives, and Americans in the middle have been urging the Democrats and their media allies to knock this off, to stop treating Trump, and more importantly, his supporters as fascists. We knew where it would lead.

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I was at Tony Packo’s in Toledo interviewing Eric and Charlie, two guys who work on freighter ships in the Great Lakes, when the news broke. People came up to the bar where we sat, Hungarian hot dogs in front of us, and asked the barkeep to turn on the news.

This was a moment too important and terrible to watch alone on your phone. We all stared as over and over we watched Trump reach for his neck and hit the deck.

There may be fringe elements of the American right who dehumanize the left with such rhetoric, but it is the very coin of the realm for progressives

But honestly, the vibe in the room was not shock. It was not, "how could this happen." It was a tired and sad resignation to the polarized and mean-spirited nature of our time.

I asked, "Are you surprised this happened?"

Charlie, a tough but well-spoken Minnesota man, looked at me and quietly said, "No."

And how could he, or any of us, be shocked? We feel the sweltering temperature of what passes for discourse on the left these days, the shrieking claims that Trump will be a dictator who destroys American democracy.

The United States was founded on the very belief that it is moral to kill human beings to rid the citizenry of tyranny and dictatorship. That is why we don’t accuse our fellow citizens of such things lightly, unless it is Donald Trump or a guy in a red MAGA hat. In that case, have at it.

In the wake of the near killing of a former president and leading candidate today, you will hear solemn voices in the liberal media, the same ones who days ago gave high-pitched warnings about the unique danger Trump poses, saying this is a problem on both sides.

No it isn't.

There may be fringe elements of the American right who dehumanize the left with such rhetoric, but it is the very coin of the realm for progressives. It is their mainstream media that has all but called for Trump to be taken out. They do it on cable news networks, not on shadowy websites.

Apologists for the dangerous ranting and raving about the supposed threats of Donald Trump to our society and lives will say the shooter had muddled politics, he was probably just crazy, or, since they are Democrats, blame the gun.

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But that excuse also won’t fly either. After all, based on the rhetoric of Democrats and too many in the media, the shooter did exactly what one is supposed to do to a Hitlerian would-be fascist dictator. 

If any good can come of this horrible tragedy that left a man just doing his civic duty at a political rally dead and two injured, it should be that Democrats understand this is not tenable, that they are still inviting more and more violence.

America will rise from this awful act, bloodied, yes, but like Trump himself rising on the stage after being shot, we will get back up. We will reject the violent rhetoric and name-calling, and with fist raised, insist there is no place for it in America.

As for the Democrats, the message to them must be as clear as the summer sun: This has to stop, and it has to stop right now.

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David Marcus is a columnist living in West Virginia and the author of "Charade: The COVID Lies That Crushed A Nation."