Donald Trump has long held that Hillary Clinton is stealing the election. But on Tuesday he suggested something even darker and more sinister: that his supporters resolve the issue with guns.

Specifically, he suggested that using the constitutional right to bear arms may be the only way to stop Clinton from appointing supreme court justices should she win in November. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said, before adding: “Although the second amendment people – maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Whether Trump was suggesting his supporters use their weaponry against Clinton herself or any liberal judges she might go on to appoint is somewhat open to interpretation. Most people are reading it as the former, but either way it’s unacceptable and a violation of what it means to live in a free democracy.

This is a new low even for Trump, who’s been accused of inciting general violence and has verbally attacked individuals from Khizr Khan to Rosie O’Donnell. But he’s never seemed to incite it against individuals – until now.

Gabby Giffords drove home that point and the pernicious effect those words could have on the unstable, in a statement released Tuesday. “We must draw a bright red line between political speech and suggestions of violence,” she said. “Responsible, stable individuals won’t take Trump’s rhetoric to its literal end, but his words may provide a magnet for those seeking infamy. They may provide inspiration or permission for those bent on bloodshed.” Those words have special meaning coming from Giffords, whose time in political office was cut short by an assassination attempt that left six dead; she survived but with a critical gunshot wound to the head.

Now Trump is pulling the tricks he always does when he says something beyond the pale politically. He’s blaming the media for getting it wrong.

Before when he’s implicitly encouraged or used the language of violence – at rallies when he’s told supporters if they punch a protester he’ll pay the legal bills, or at campaign stops when he’s boasted murder wouldn’t drive his supporters away – he’s walked it back as just another quirky part of his humor. “Obviously it was a joke,” he later said of the murder brag.

Trump’s already spinning this newest threat, saying he meant that second amendment supporters could still stop Clinton’s election – by voting, sillies!

But that line, like much of his campaign rhetoric, is pure bullshit. While there’s some wiggle room in other parts of his statement what’s not up for debate is that he was talking about Clinton’s powers after the election, if she wins – “if she gets to pick her judges”.

You can’t stop someone from winning democratically if they’ve already won a democratic election – you have to do it criminally, and specifically, according to the rest of Trump’s quote, using “the second amendment”.

I’ve no doubt that it’s an unequivocal call for the use of gun violence to upend democracy and one for which Trump should not be given the benefit of the doubt.

Even more stunning than any of Trump’s stunningly unpresidential behavior is that not every Republican has run straight for the hills. He even had backup from that Republican mainstay organization known as the National Rifle Association, which tweeted its support for his initial statement even as it altered its meaning by claiming Trump said if Clinton gets to pick supreme court judges, “there’s nothing we can do.”

This is not party politics as usual. This goes beyond mere polarization or the other ills of Washington. It’s an attack on democracy that’s as personal as it is politically vile.

Trump was talking in thinly veiled terms about the most personal kind of attack there is – an attack on the body and specifically, an attack on the body of the first female president.

The gendered element of it isn’t lost on party leaders. Elizabeth Warren didn’t mince words on Twitter this evening, saying Donald Trump“makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.”

Rebecca Traister has written brilliantly on the long history of powerful men like Trump who would delegitimize the ascent of women and minorities. But this – to have the nominee of a major party appear to encourage his supporters to assassinate his opponent – is unlike anything we’ve seen before, quite likely for the simple reason that we’ve never had a woman this close to the White House steps.

Just as the birther movement that Trump helped lead was thinly veiled racism rooted in the belief that a black man couldn’t possibly legitimately be the president, Trump’s insistence that “crooked Hillary” has “stolen” the election thrives among those who are angry that power could be taken from them by a woman, and specifically this one.

It’s vulgar, un-American and undemocratic. And it was only a matter of time.