'It wasn't a joke': Anti-Trump conservative slams press for downplaying violent rhetoric

Anti-Trump conservative Charlie Sykes is taking the media to task for downplaying former President Donald Trump's violent rhetoric.

Writing in his Substack page, Sykes argued that Trump's call for "one real rough, nasty day" to purportedly solve America's crime problem was not just a one-off or a piece of rhetorical excess.

However, just because Trump has talked like this before, he said that doesn't excuse the media from ignoring its implications given his past incitements of political violence.

"Trump’s Purge-like quote... didn’t make the front pages of most major newspapers because… well… they figured it was just Trump being Trump," he contends. "His call for 'one real rough, nasty day,' was just a variation of his usual fetish for police violence, and so not particularly novel and therefore not especially newsworthy. And, indeed, we’ve seen this before. Which is precisely why attention needs to be paid, because time and again, what seems like an off-the-cuff remark or a bleat from the fringes morphs into a central message of his campaign."

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He then zeroed in on Trump's dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants, which has already lead to bomb threats at institutions in Springfield, Ohio.

"Just this weekend, in Wisconsin, he described the invasion migrants as 'animals' who will 'will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat,'" he wrote. "And he pledged: 'I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We're going to liberate our country.' Then came his call for a daylong spasm of violence. It wasn’t a joke; and it wasn’t an isolated call for more violence."

Read the whole piece here.