The St. Louis Post-dispatch on how Trump’s recent rhetoric reminds us why he’s unfit for office:

It’s a disturbing oddity of our current political era that a leading presidential candidate can suggest that an American general who has criticized him should be executed, that shoplifters should be shot on sight, that the federal government should crack down on a television network whose coverage he doesn’t like and that an elderly man being attacked with a hammer is joke-worthy — and no one bats an eye.

The above-referenced lunacy all came from (where else?) the twisted mind, mouth and fingers of former President Donald Trump. And that was just within the past few weeks.

Reach back to last year, and Trump was suggesting that the U.S. Constitution should be suspended to allow his return to office. Reach back to Jan. 6, 2021, and he was directing his deranged followers to “fight like hell” to prevent certification of valid election results, fueling the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol that day.

Reach back further still, and this silver-spoon draft evader was slandering war heroes (“I like people who weren’t captured”), whitewashing the Tiki-torch-carrying neo-nazis of Charlottesville (“very fine people on both sides”) and extolling the virtues of sexual assault (“grab them by the ...”).

So yes, Trump has been a rhetorical dirty bomb throughout his eight years at the center of the nation’s political stage. So much so that pausing now to note his latest verbal assaults against democratic norms and basic decency might feel redundant.

But Trump’s latest unhinged utterances are important to note here for two reasons:

One, the very phenomenon of the normalization of his psychotic rhetoric is in itself dangerous. The mere fact that he spews so much verbal sewage that the culture has gotten used to it shouldn’t provide a pass to a man who, according to polls, has as much chance of being the next president as does the sitting one.

And two, Trump’s always-toxic rhetoric seems to be getting worse lately, in quantifiable ways. To the extent this is because he understands he has a real possibility of returning to the White House, and is signaling his intentions upon getting there, the nation should listen.

As is so often the case with Trump, some of his worst recent rhetoric was aimed at someone formerly in his own inner circle — in this case, Gen. Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the final months of Trump’s presidency.

It was during that tumultuous period, as Trump was attempting to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, that Milley assured his Chinese counterparts during a phone call that the U.S. government was stable.

That call, made at the behest of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, was perfectly appropriate, given the world’s trepidation about the turmoil within the U.S. government at that moment. Yet during a rant against Milley on his Truth Social media platform last month, Trump called it “a treasonous act,” one “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” ...

In another Truth Social rant late last month, Trump made clear he is itching to use the power of the federal government to go after media outlets he doesn’t like should he be returned to power.

The parent company of NBC News and MSNBC, he wrote, should be investigated for “Country Threatening Treason” for reporting on the investigation into Russian influence during his administration.

Redeploying his go-to Stalinesque phrase “enemy of the people,” Trump expanded his target to include the entire “Lamesstream Media,” which, he wrote, “will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”

“The Fake News Media,” declared the man who once swore to uphold and defend the Constitution, “should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”

Just a week after vowing to unravel the First Amendment, Trump told an audience of California Republicans that, in effect, he is also eager to sidestep the Fifth and Sixth Amendments — the ones that guarantee trial by jury and other rights for criminal defendants.

Shrugging off such constitutional niceties, Trump enthusiastically told the crowd of his solution for confronting retail theft: “You can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.”

“Shot!” he repeated, as the room cheered.

It was in that same speech that Trump reminded the world that, in addition to being a pathological liar and aspiring dictator, he harbors a demonstrable lack of empathy that borders on sociopathic.

How else to interpret his inhumane joke at the expense of Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suffered a skull fracture last year — at age 82 — when a home intruder beat him with a hammer.

Vowing in the speech to “stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi,” Trump added glibly: “How’s her husband doing, anybody know? And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house — which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”

What a knee-slapper ....

Trump’s recent rhetoric is not merely disgusting but alarming. He has, to paraphrase the famous warning from Maya Angelou, reminded us who he is. On that issue, if on no others, America should believe him.