In a September 2016 piece in The Atlantic, writer Salena Zito described an ironic phenomenon regarding then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s outrageous rhetoric.

The press, Zito wrote, “takes him literally, but not seriously,” while Trump’s more fervent supporters “take him seriously, but not literally.”

Almost a decade later, the mainstream media has certainly learned its lesson about not taking Trump seriously; no rational observer of the current presidential race would rule out the strong possibility that Trump is headed for a second term as president.

But Trump’s supporters seem to still believe that when he bellows dehumanizing insults, toxic lies and second-term proposals that sound more like the schemes of a 1930s aspiring dictator than a modern American presidential contender, he doesn’t really mean it. This despite a first term in which he did in fact attempt (and occasionally succeed at) fulfilling some of his darker campaign screeds.

Consider his rhetorical low points just in the weeks since his unhinged slander on the debate stage about Haitian immigrants eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio:

• At a Pennsylvania rally late last month, Trump suggested “one real rough, nasty … violent day” of police brutality in order to end crime. “One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out, and it will end immediately, you know?”

• At recent speeches in Wisconsin and Michigan, he falsely claimed that undocumented migrants are rampaging through the Midwest slitting people’s throats: “They grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents.”

• In a radio interview last week, Trump leaned into eugenics while pressing his false claims of a migrant crime wave in the U.S.: “You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

• At a rally Saturday in California, Trump referenced an apparent heckler in the audience, suggesting she should get “the hell knocked out of her” when she gets home to her mother.

In case you think such hate speech and flat-out lies can’t spawn real-world violence, consider the impact of Trump’s recent false claims that the Biden administration is purposely shorting red-state regions of hurricane disaster aid. That lie has metastasized on the political right to the point that emergency aid workers responding to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina had to stop working for part of the weekend due to reports of “armed militia” threatening to kill government workers.

Trump now vows a migrant roundup-and-deportation policy that, in his own recent words, will be a “bloody story.” Project 2025 is replete with other schemes to give Trump near-dictatorial powers, including politically weaponizing the Justice Department and using the military for domestic purposes.

Don’t take our word for it. Take his.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch