The assassination Of Jamal Khashoggi is the true metric of Trump's complicity to political violence
Tuning in to the good news of the apprehension of the MAGAbomber the MSNBC hosts try to handle the hot potato question of how to quantify to what degree does Trump's venomous campaign as a candidate or President raised the threshold of political violence.
Most of us was angered by Trumps entire campaign of political violence which was started with the entire insulting demeaning and racist attack on President Obama's citizenship (which if you think about it was an even greater insult to the memory of the great Dr. Ann Dunham) and the lies about the Central Park 5 (who have suffered enough from false accusations).
It is clear that Trump has turned comity and political discourse on its head. That was his whole point. He boasted about it. He crowed about not accepting waterboarding but embracing it and going beyond to real torture. He casually talked about bombing ISIS off the map even though it would result in tens of thousands of innocent civilian deaths.
Reasonable people trying to have reasonable talk on a national platform with a national audience have to attempt some objective metric to show how bad Trumps vitriol is. Its bad, but how bad. At that point the MSNBC hosts dither back and forth, he's responsible, but he's not the only one. Then the obligatory reference to Congressman Scalise (and no reference to the three others that were wounded) and no one mentioning Medger, John, Bobby or Martin.
He heats up the vitriol but can we really hold Trump accountable for any individual action the incredulous hosts ask.
In this case however the murder of Jamal Khashoggi gives us the perfect metric to diagnose exactly how much Trump's rhetoric has changed the atmosphere for political violence as if they were trying to discern a boiling point for a new metal found in outer space.
If any other person was President then the Saud's would never have tortured and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi because the House of Saud would never have risked the exposure.
They didn't do it under President Obama and chaffed at his administration's interest in holding Saudi Arabia accountable.
They wouldn't have done it under President Clinton.
They wouldn't do it under a President Pence or Jeb Bush or anyone else because they might have done something.
Literally the only person that they could count on to do absolutely nothing is Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump will do nothing and that is the true metric of Trump's impact on increasing political violence and we don't need to discuss it because everyone knows it. The only question is will America take a step back in 11 days.