Trump’s intensifying rhetoric offers insight into how he might govern again as president

Over the past two weeks, Donald Trump said shoplifters should be immediately shot, suggested the United States’ top general be executed and mocked a political opponent’s husband who was beaten with a hammer. The former president and current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination also in recent weeks encouraged the impeachment of Democratic President Joe Biden because the “lowlifes Impeached me TWICE,” urged his party to shut down the U.S. government with the hope it would stall some of the criminal cases he faces, and said that, if elected to the White House again, he would threaten NBC News and MSNBC’s access to the airwaves over news coverage of him that he called “Country Threatening Treason.” From his earliest days in public life as a New York real estate tycoon, Trump has favored language that makes him appear tough and scrappy, particularly when it comes to crime and retribution for his perceived enemies. His former vice president, Mike Pence, on Tuesday called them “utterly unacceptable” at a national security and foreign policy event at Washington’s Georgetown University co-hosted by The Associated Press. It also included a long list of behaviors that Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, said demonstrated that Trump “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s language. “We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, anybody know?” Trump said as the crowd laughed loudly and cheered.