Why are they laughing and clapping? Because they know it's not a joke.

The President of the United States committed multiple felonies and hired a pet toad as attorney general to try to shove it under the rug. He is now asserting that Congress is not a co-equal branch of government with oversight powers as laid out in the Constitution, and so has no authority to subpoena documents or witnesses he doesn't like. He and his apparatchiks have decided they can just flout the law—that they are above it. He has relentlessly attacked the free press as an enemy of the state, attempting to undermine any source of information independent from his government. He has called for his political opponents to be investigated and imprisoned. He has repeatedly embraced political violence from the rally podium. He has "joked" about extending his term and, Wednesday night, about serving more than the two he's limited to by the Constitution.

Sadly, that last part wasn't the most frightening "joke" of the evening at the Trump rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, last night.

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At his rally tonight, Trump says the government is unable to violently attack immigrants, someone in the crowd shouted "Shoot them!"



The crowd & Trump erupt in laughter & cheers. Trump says, "Only in the panhandle can you get away with that statement."pic.twitter.com/SgQd2OH9ti — jordan (@JordanUhl) May 9, 2019

When Trump talked about stopping asylum-seekers and other undocumented immigrants, a person in the crowd yelled, "Shoot them!" and everybody laughed and cheered and clapped. In response, the president laughed that this was all some charming regional quirk of the Florida Panhandle, where you can "get away with" this kind of joke.

Not convinced that's what the rally attendee said? Here's another Trump supporter who was in the crowd speaking to an ABC News reporter afterwards:

Another ABC News reporter, Will Steakin, also backed this account.

This is not a joke. Over and over again, Trump has made comments his aides later dismissed as "jokes," or gone out of his way to say he would never do something, all with the intent of putting these ideas out there. Perhaps they might take on a life of their own. He once said he "hates these people"—referring to reporters—but "would never kill them." Why does that need to be said, unless you want to get people thinking about it? At a rally in February, a supporter worked into a frenzy physically attacked a BBC reporter while Trump spoke.

The intent last night was clear: float the idea by suggesting we could never allow border agents to use weapons against migrants, even though other countries do. And then, when a guy in the crowd jumps to the next step, let it slide into the public imagination under the guise of a "joke." It's a trial balloon. Will there be pushback? Where will the message land, and how?

After all, there are already people roaming the border who are musing about murdering immigrants. Various "militias" have taken it upon themselves to patrol the border as a vigilante—or paramilitary—force. As reporter Ken Klippenstein found just this week thanks to a police report obtained through FOIA, some of them are quite interested in what the president's joking about.

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Member of border militia that detained 200 migrants at gunpoint told police another member had said, “Why are we...not lining them up and shooting them? We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber” per report I obtained under FOIA: https://t.co/XLUCBIAGTo pic.twitter.com/Bdtv3H28sp — Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 6, 2019

They're already "detaining" large groups of migrants at gunpoint based on no legal authority. That's also known as "kidnapping." (The leader of the group, United Constitutional Patriots, was arrested. Now the group want to change its name to escape accountability.) At least one member, it appears, is already musing about lining people they capture up against a wall and shooting them. Perhaps they are looking for some kind of...permission. Or signal. From someone in a position of authority. Who communicates it's not a big deal—normal, even. We're all laughing, after all.

Elsewhere in the speech, Trump once again echoed conspiracy theories about an "invasion" of immigrants at the southern border.

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Trump pushes the same "invasion" conspiracy theory about migrants that motivated the Tree of Life shooter pic.twitter.com/Ics1MajQ1X — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 9, 2019

This is the theory that drove the Tree of Life synagogue shooter—who believed Jews were helping to organize the "invasion" of nonwhite people through The Caravan—to kill 11 Jewish worshippers. (After the shooting, Trump said he "wouldn't be surprised" if someone was funding The Caravan when asked by a reporter, echoing anti-Semitic tropes. In response to a reporter's further question, he even alluded to George Soros, a Jewish billionaire and frequent target for right-wing conspiracies. He also doubled down on his "invasion" language.) In reality, most people coming to the southern border are seeking asylum based on claims they are fleeing domestic or gang violence in the chaotic Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In another time, we might call them refugees. They travel in "caravans" up through Mexico because the journey is dangerous and there's safety in numbers.

No matter: they are convenient villains in the president's dark and venal vision of the American Experiment, where this is a country for and by white people and everybody else ought to be thankful for whatever they get. The demonization of The Other is a tale as old as America, but Donald Trump has returned the nation to dangerous places in 2019, questioning not just the Americanness, but the very humanity, of Hispanic immigrants and Muslims. He does so by attacking these groups' violent outliers—the drug dealers and coyotes and ISIS—but these are the only examples of these groups he has ever discussed. There has never been one word about the Guatemalan mother who flees here with her child and works for decades cleaning somebody's house. It's only ever the murderers and rapists, and if they're "invading" your country, any response is justified.

His followers get the message. Note that the woman in the clip above—who confirmed someone else in the crowd yelled "shoot 'em"—did not say the supporter and the president were talking about "illegal immigrants." She said "immigrants." Because that's who Trump is always talking about. It's not about the law. Donald Trump has no regard for the law. It's about Us and Them. There is no reason to believe this will get anything other than worse while this grotesque and incurable man continues to wield more power than any other human being on Earth. He is a danger to the most marginalized in our society now, but that's how it always begins. If he can get away with this, who will be next?

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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