At this point, pretending this is normal is no longer an option.

We are now dealing with multiple assassination attempts against a sitting President. That should be a line no one crosses, but clearly, something in this country has gone deeply wrong. This didn’t come out of nowhere. It didn’t happen in a vacuum.

It happened in an environment that has been building for years; an environment where political rhetoric has been pushed further and further to the edge.

Let’s stop dancing around it.

When public figures repeatedly label their political opponents as “fascists,” “dictators,” or compare them to some of the most evil figures in history, they are not just making arguments; they are raising the temperature of the entire country.

Let’s list just a few:

Joe Biden – (if it was really him) – Agreed with Chief of Staff John Kelly that Trump “falls into the general definition of a fascist”

Hillary Clinton – “Hitler was duly elected,” and warned that Trump has “dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies”

Maxine Waters – “I will go and take Trump out tonight”

Hakeem Jeffries – “We’re going to fight it in the courts, and we’re going to fight it in the streets”

Eric Swalwell – “When they go low, we’re going to bury them beneath the Capitol”

Nancy Pelosi – “I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be”

JB Pritzker – Compared Trump’s approach to immigration and the use of the DOJ to Nazi tactics, while claiming he did not specifically call him Hitler.

Jasmine Crocket – Referred to Trump as “Temu Hitler” and a “wannabe Hitler”

The list could go on with Kamala Harris, Jerry Nadler, Bernie Sanders, and more, but I think you get the picture.

And when that kind of language becomes constant, it stops sounding like opinion and starts sounding like justification.

That’s dangerous.

You cannot spend years telling people that a political opponent is an existential threat to democracy, that they are comparable to history’s worst tyrants, and then act shocked when unstable individuals take that message seriously. Words matter. Repetition matters. Tone matters. In my opinion, these comments, coupled with the refusal to fund the DOJ, are deliberate attempts to get some of their radical extremists to do exactly what they’ve attempted at least three times, thus far.

And yet now, after the damage is done, in a moment of pure Hypocrisy, Hakeem Jeffries has called for unity amongst all sides in politics.

That’s not leadership. That’s deflection.

If leaders truly believed in lowering the temperature, they would have done it long ago. Instead, we’ve seen a steady escalation of more extreme language, more personal attacks, more attempts to frame political disagreements as moral emergencies.

This is not about silencing criticism. Criticism is part of democracy. Disagreement is part of democracy. Even strong opposition is part of democracy.

But there is a line between opposition and dehumanization, and that line has been crossed far too often.

When political opponents are no longer treated as wrong, but as dangerous, illegitimate, or beyond redemption, it creates a climate where extreme actions start to feel justified to those already on the edge.

And now we’re seeing exactly what that kind of climate produces.

The Secret Service has acknowledged an “extraordinary number of threats” and has had to dramatically increase protective measures around the President. That is not a sign of a healthy political system. That is a warning sign.

The question is whether anyone is willing to take responsibility for how we got here.

Because this isn’t just about one individual or one office. If this level of rhetoric continues, it won’t stop with one target. It won’t stay contained. It will spread, and when it does, the consequences will be far worse.

At some point, leaders have to decide what matters more: scoring political points or maintaining a country where political differences don’t turn into real-world threats.

Right now, the answer hasn’t been encouraging.

It’s time for accountability. Real accountability, not statements, not spin, not convenient calls for “both sides” to calm down after years of escalation.

If the rhetoric helped create this environment, then the rhetoric has to change. Immediately.

Because if it doesn’t, we all know where this road leads.

And by then, it will be too late to pretend no one saw it coming.