Democrats have spent the past two-plus years accusing the president of the United States and his allies of seditiously conspiring with our enemies to destroy “democracy.” For the most part this fairytale has been cynically deployed by politicians to undermine the legitimacy of a Republican presidency, yet millions of Americans now believe their votes were upended by a foreign power. There is no more serious charge against an elected official than treason.

Then again, for decades before the 2016 election, Democrats argued that Republicans were literally killing their fellow Americans when cutting taxes, murdering the sick when rejecting nationalized health care, and sentencing the poor to death when rejecting socialist schemes. Not to mention suppressing the minority vote when asking for ID, engaging in Nazi-like actions when enforcing existing border laws, and destroying the world when failing to embrace a takeover of the economy. And so on.

This overwrought rhetoric is embedded in the everyday arguments of the mainstream left, and its intensity is only growing.

The same liberals are now demanding that conservatives stop quoting and posting video of progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar belittling the 9/11 attacks because doing so puts her life in danger. That’s quite the deal they’ve cooked up for themselves. Nearly every presidential candidate and major Democratic leader has argued that Donald Trump’s criticism of Omar is out of line because of increased death threats against her. I do wonder how many death threats Trump or Mitch McConnell or Steve Scalise receives every week. I imagine it’s considerable.

But, as usual, most of the media took up the Democrats’ cause, trying to infantilize a 38-year-old woman. “Trump clearly unmoved over increased concerns raised by Dems over Omar’s safety,” noted The Washington Post’s CNN’s Manu Raju after Trump attacked Nancy Pelosi’s handling of the Minnesota representative. One wonders if Raju had similar apprehensions when he published a story with two alleged sources giving him the same exact incorrect information falsely accusing Donald Trump Jr. of conspiring with Russia?

Do reporters and columnists consider the safety of the Trump administration before writing critically about them? I hope not. Because free speech—political discourse and good faith political reporting included—shouldn’t be inhibited by prospective actions of third-party nuts. It is imperative, in fact, that we don’t let those nuts undercut our ability to freely express our political disagreements. If Americans pondered the actions of political terrorists every time they took a position, they would only be empowering criminals.

Not one of Trump’s critical comments about Omar called for violence in any way. He didn’t rationalize chasing Omar out of a restaurants or standing in front of her home with a bullhorn. The idea that politicians should have immunity from criticism is not something journalists, or anyone who values free expression, should give any credence. Yet, here we are.

Let’s remember one of the times we actually saw overt political violence was when progressive activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer attempted to assassinate the entire Republican congressional delegation. As far as I can tell, no one in the media asked Sanders or any other Democrats to temper their political rhetoric about Republicans. If the reverse had occurred we would have been plunged into a national discussion about right-wing rhetoric. (Wait, what am I saying, Republicans are already asked to take responsibility for violent actions of people who have nothing to do with them!)

Attempting to chill speech isn’t a new tactic for Democrats, and certainly not when it comes to Omar. As an African-American Muslim woman, the congresswoman has reached the pinnacle of special status, and thus any criticism, even quoting her verbatim or playing a video of her yucking it up about terrorism, is categorized as racist. There are no specific guidelines for when it’s acceptable to be critical of the things an African-American Muslim woman politician says, though, for most people the answer is “never.”

Of course, the notion that someone’s color or ethnicity or religion offers them dispensation from political debate is one of the most destructive aspect of this debate.

Democrats chose to rally around Omar, celebrating her immigrant story and appearing with her on magazine covers. Now those Democrats are compelled to cover up and rationalize her comments (though we shouldn’t underestimate how popular some of her anti-Jewish tirades and ugly views of America are among progressives). There is no freshman-level Marxist gobbledygook or conspiracy theory that Omar won’t regurgitate, from claiming that the US was “founded by genocide” to claiming that American power is built through “neocolonialism” to embracing morally decrepit ideas about the Middle East and Jews.

Democrats first covered for her actions by watering down an already-useless resolution condemning her anti-Semitic comments with a bunch of vacuous censures of all bigotry. Even today, Democrats and their media allies continue to mislead about what Omar actually said. This week, Maggie Haberman and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times, for example, described Omar as being in trouble over “comments on Israel.” Bernie Sanders offered the same falsehood in his Fox News town hall when he claimed “It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of a right wing government in Israel.” The comments Omar was in trouble for weren’t about Israel. Of course, her continuous attacks on our liberal allies and her defense of proto-terrorist states is one thing. But Omar was in trouble for smearing American Jews, not merely Israel.

Now, they’ve moved onto covering for her with “fact checks” and feigned indignation. It is clear to me that Omar was minimizing 9/11, as she does Islamic terrorism in general. It’s clear to me she is a defender of theocrats and an apologist for terror organizations like Hamas. You might disagree. You can view her comments and decide for yourself. Whatever the case, threats of violence against politicians are illegal and should be condemned by any decent person. In the end, though, whether Omar has increased threats against her or not, she is a public figure and deserves no special dispensation from debate.