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For nearly two minutes on Wednesday, Donald Trump managed to (almost) sound like a normal president, i.e., a commander-in-chief who is finding the right words to assure a nation in a time of crisis that things will be ok.

Unfortunately, his address to the country following the assassination of right-wing organizer Charlie Kirk lasted four minutes, and after (mostly) getting the tone right in the beginning, he quickly reverted back to his true self.

Trump started out well enough.

To my great fellow Americans, I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah. Charlie inspired millions, and tonight, all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror. Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and the country that he loved so much, the United States of America. He fought for liberty, democracy, justice, and the American people. He’s a martyr for truth and freedom, and there’s never been anyone who was so respected by youth.

Apart from the “anger” part, the talk of Kirk being a “martyr,” and the superlatives, that sounds perfectly normal. If we wanted to quibble, we’d point out that almost all Americans were horrified by the shooting of the Turning Point USA founder, and not just the people who loved him.

That would have allowed Trump to note that something good can come from this tragedy because it managed to put the country to put partisanship aside.

But, as you will see, that wasn’t what the president was going for.

Charlie was also a man of deep, deep faith, and we take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at peace with God in heaven.

Our prayers are with his wife, Erika, their two young beloved children, and his entire family, who he loved more than anything in the world. We ask God to watch over them in this terrible hour of heartache and pain.

This is a dark moment for America. Charlie Kirk traveled the nation, joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good-faith debate. His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense. On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace.

This is the most normal part of the address. No notes.

Then things went off the rails.

It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

This would have been acceptable, if Trump had acknowledged that he and his allies in the media are some of the worst offenders in this regard. He routinely “demonizes those with whom he disagrees” and does so in very hateful and despicable ways – immigrants become “animals,” his opponents get derogatory nicknames, and critics of the GOP are “socialists” who want to destroy the country.

This is when we reach the 1:58 mark.

Before we go on, let’s remember that there have been many opportunities for Trump to rally the nation… and he has wasted them all.

Whenever he struck even a remotely normal tone, pundits often fell all over themselves with praise. For example, this was the case following his first State of the Union address, after which CNN’s Van Jones famously declared that he “became president of the United States in that moment, period!”

Here is the thing: Trump has no interest in becoming president of all Americans. He wants to be president of those who like him… and rule everybody else.

Which brings us to the second half of his address from Wednesday night.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis* and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

Now we get to the heart of the matter.

First of all, the killer has not been caught, so we have no idea what the motive was. Trump’s would-be assassin from last year certainly wasn’t a member of the “radical left.”

The key sentence in Trump’s entire address is “it must stop right now.” This is the prelude to using this tragedy to silence the president’s opposition.

My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.

Well, he wasted no time to spell things out, did he?

Although Trump is the one who is “going after judges,” we doubt that he is talking about himself here. Instead, this is the beginning of a crackdown on groups opposing him.

From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

Trump is conveniently leaving out the murder of a Minnesota Democrat and her husband (as well as the attempted murder of another), the arson attack on Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house, the shooting death of a police officer outside of the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the assassination attempt on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), which left her husband seriously injured.

That last one didn’t happen this year, but we included it because Trump mocked the Pelosis and his son, Don Jr., made fun of the attack in its immediate aftermath. By the way, no Democrat of any stature expressed anything other than horror on Wednesday, and all of them condemned political violence.

Having gotten the most important part of the address out of the way, the president then sounded like a normal person again.

Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died: the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.

Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed, because together we will ensure that his voice, his message, and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.

Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie’s voice has become bigger and grander than ever before—and it’s not even close.

May God bless his memory. May God watch over his family. And may God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

We certainly feel for Kirk’s wife and his two young children and regret his death… not only because we condemn political violence but also because, as Trump’s address has shown (along with the reaction of right-wing social media), it is the beginning of something very bad.

*Full disclosure: We recently wrote a four-part series examining the parallels between MAGAmerica and Nazi Germany. There are lots of them (although we focused more on circumstances than policies).