A week of terror in America culminated Saturday with one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks in American history. This followed the double-murder of two African-Americans at a supermarket in Kentucky—a location the white shooter, who reportedly told a white bystander that "whites don't kill whites," settled on after failing to gain entry to a black church—and, of course, the rolling attempted assassinations-by-bomb of prominent Democrats and CNN contributors.

Here is the way the United States president chose to start off this following week:

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There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

The president is not interested in, and is probably incapable of, responding to the demands of the current moment. He is not interested in, and is probably incapable of, attempting to turn down the rhetoric in an explosive environment he has largely created.

Trump has endorsed political violence from the podium; offered to pay the legal bills of his supporters who carry out political violence; suggested "Second Amendment people" could find a solution if his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, defeated him in the 2016 election. All the while, he has demonized his political opponents as enemies of the state, willing to allow immigrant hordes to invade the country through the southern border, and the media as Enemies of the People, spreading disinformation to support that effort.

That is to say, he embraces violence and routinely names Enemies of his movement, portraying his struggle with them in apocalyptic terms.

Scott Olson Getty Images

He lives in the gray area between providing explicit instructions for his supporters, which he does not need to do, and (legitimately) calling for calmer, more civil discourse. He sets the tone, and people on the fringes of society take notice. If the president's opponents are criminals escaping legal penalty—"Lock Her Up"—perhaps someone else needs to take the quest for justice into their own hands. If The Caravan is full of immigrants who want to destroy the America you know—and, in the most extreme formulations, commit so-called White Genocide—then killing to prevent that scenario finds justification in the conspiracy-addled mind.

But if you cannot accept even a modicum of responsibility for your role in something—or refuse to—it is nearly impossible to begin the work of undoing the damage. Trump refuses to admit he bears any responsibility. It is also difficult because Trump appears totally incapable of even performing empathy, particularly for people he does not know personally:

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Trump jokes that he considered cancelling speech to FFA not b/c of the mass shooting in Pittsburgh, but b/c his hair got wet while talking w/reporters about the shooting.



"At least you know it's mine... I said, 'maybe I should cancel this arrangement b/c I have a bad hair day.'" pic.twitter.com/wLIlqQpENj — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2018

When the president thinks about the people killed at the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday, there is no indication from his public behavior that he feels anything at all. According to The New York Times, his (Jewish) daughter and son-in-law had to convince him to release a statement condemning anti-Semitism in the wake of the attack. Perhaps he does not understand how hate and extremism are now coursing through the country, bubbling beneath the surface until, ever more frequently, it boils over and people die. More likely, he finds this environment to be to his advantage.

Worst of all, it's not just the president who's proving himself more than willing to ratchet up the atmosphere heading into the midterms. He has an entire ecosystem of disinformation to call on, starting, of course, with Fox News.

The president's favorite teevee show, Fox and Friends, started things off Monday morning by hosting Trump's propaganda minister. Kellyanne Conway explained that despite it being the deadliest attack on Jewish people in the nation's history, by a man who frequently trumpeted his hatred for Jews and cited a Jewish group's role in helping refugees bound for America, the Pittsburgh shooting was not about anti-Semitism, per se. It was part of a larger campaign of anti-religiosity, including from late-night comedians:

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Conway tries to frame Pittsburgh shooting as really being about "anti-religiosity" writ large.



"The anti-religiosity in this country that is somehow in vogue... making fun of people who express religion, the late night comedians,.. It's always anti-religious." pic.twitter.com/yw6ZvY1CIQ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2018

Yes, the United States president's aide did just All Lives Matter a massacre of Jews. She did equate the violence and death visited on a growing number of the president's critics and perceived opponents to the mean words visited on his allies. She did try to force this into the ongoing conservative victimization farce, where white conservative Christians are the real persecuted group in America—that is, the supposed victim of late-night jokes. Never mind that, as many have already pointed out, Stephen Colbert, the number one late-night comedian of the present moment, is a devout Catholic who teaches Sunday school. Or that the only late-night comedian who actively bashes religion is Bill Maher, whose show Conway appears on frequently. Never mind that Conway works for a man who tried to ban an entire religion from the United States.

No, it's all a disgusting burlesque. These shameless liars will say anything. And Fox's programming in general has gone on as if the spasm of violent bloodshed last week never happened. Remember that the Pittsburgh shooter specifically cited unfounded conspiracies about The Caravan? Here's Fox and Friends' coverage this morning.

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.@kilmeade on the migrant caravan: "What about diseases?... We already give 40 to 50% of our taxable income to the govt for social programs. Is it too much to say we just can't have a country's entire population come in here without being looked at as hard-hearted?" pic.twitter.com/gDiv4igZaw — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2018

The immigrants are bringing disease now? This is fascist propaganda. There is not a shred of evidence to support it—not unlike Brian Kilmeade's earlier statement that many migrant children will become MS-13 members in his neighborhood. But it's yet another attempt to dehumanize the supposed invaders coming for the southern border. In reality, the people in "The Caravan" are a thousand miles away, and those that make it to the border will present themselves to American immigration authorities in the hopes of getting an asylum hearing, as is their right under international law and treaties to which the United States is a signatory. In saner times, we might call them "refugees."

But not in these times. The idea the migrants in The Caravan are vermin carrying disease is now apparently one of the stock tropes at Fox:

Leave it to Laura Ingraham, who said the child detention centers where we put kids after separating them from their parents were like "summer camp," to carry the flag here. The same goes for Lou Dobbs, who has come down with a serious case of Brain Disease in the Trump Era. About 12 hours after the Pittsburgh attack—where, again, the gunman cited Jewish support for The Caravan and more open immigration policies as justification for mass murder—Fox Business re-aired this segment:

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Straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just moments ago, Lou Dobbs guest Chris Farrell (head of Judicial Watch) says Caravan is being funded/directed by the "Soros-occupied State Department". pic.twitter.com/QBSong7uk1 — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 27, 2018

Again, as Josh Marshall explains, this is blatant anti-Semitic propaganda. That it's combined with xenophobic fear-mongering about immigrant hordes ticks a few too many boxes.

These people like the current environment. They think it is to their advantage. They are feeding into it, nurturing it, encouraging it to grow and metastasize. They are confident they will not feel the repercussions. It's likely not their blood that will spill. But it's clearer than ever that more blood will indeed spill as the rhetoric intensifies and people on the fringes of society, who've lost faith in themselves and the country and feel they're alone with nowhere to turn, turn to political violence in a desperate search for meaning. The vast majority of people who believe The Caravan conspiracies promoted by the president and his media apparatchiks will not kill. But it seems some of them will.

Does anyone really believe we've met the last man—the last white man in late middle age convinced brown people are invading the country, perhaps with the assistance of powerful Jews—who will take things into his own hands?

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Another suspicious package addressed to CNN has been intercepted. This time in Atlanta. All mail is being screened off site. Note from Jeff: pic.twitter.com/I6TXSkoluQ — CNN Communications (@CNNPR) October 29, 2018

If anyone does, they shouldn't.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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