Trump encourages violence against his enemies. Again.

Twitter.com | @AccountableGOP

Donald Trump, former President of the United States and frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination, has once again publicly called for violence against his political enemies.

During an interview with Real America’s Voice, Trump said “a lot of people on the Right are so disgusted with what they’re seeing with the woke and all the other things—the mutilation—it’s very, very sad. I don’t know why that they’re not—they’re just not attacked.”

This is not close to the first time that Trump has celebrated or encouraged violence against those whom he regards as political opponents. It’s been a recurring theme of his unconventional political career.

A full inventory of Trump’s violent remarks would require more bandwidth than this website can possibly host, but some examples include: a time he was heckled in 2016 and wistfully mused that, in bygone days, the heckler would be “carried out on a stretcher”; a time in 2020 in which he asked his acting-Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, if protestors could be shot in their legs; and times more recent in which he encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and the execution of top military officials.

Violent rhetoric is a staple of authoritarian strongmen like Trump, but it’s an indictment of today’s Republican Party that this behavior—which would have once been immediately disqualifying—is now arguably the source of his enduring appeal among the far right base.

What’s certain is Republican leaders won’t condemn it and the Republican base won’t withhold their vote because of it, so it’s up to Democrats, independents, and those who claim to be centrists to punish Donald Trump the only way we can: by rejecting him enthusiastically at the ballot box and denying him a second presidential term.

Shame and moral appeals won’t deter Trump and his allies. Perhaps persistent defeat will.