Actually, I was exaggerating at the expense of Mussolini, not Trump.

Even while I pull my hands away from that hot stove, I have to admit that in my mind there is a tape that plays over and over on which Mr. Trump is asking his supporters to do physical harm to anti-Trump protestors and promising to cover the legal bills for anybody taken downtown for assault and battery. I don’t for a minute think he will pay those lawyers because he has a history of failing to pay his own lawyers, but I’m sure his fans believe him.

The harm to public discourse is not that he’ll pay for violence but that people think he will.

There’s another Trump trope where the threat of violence is more than a threat. I’m sure you’ve heard him complain about the police helping people get in the police car without hitting their noggins. He starts there and then branches out to endorse what we used to call when I was a police magistrate, “putting a few don’t bumps on them.”

With Trump and his appointees in charge of the Justice Department, it’s meaner and scarier on those streets and that does not mean safer.