to 2013. He was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate. In 2011, President Barack Obama signed a bill granting him two more years more than his 10-year term limit. This January, 83 percent of Republicans said the Mueller investigation was a politically motivated witch hunt. While Trump did not cause an overwhelming number of his followers to distrust our intelligence community generally and Mueller specifically, he invited it. This is what authoritarians do; they delegitimize the institutions that serve as checks on their power.

Since becoming president, Trump has consistently downplayed the dangers of white nationalism and provided rhetorical cover for racists. In his public remarks following the death of a protester at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, forfellow Americans, but he invited it.

Donald Trump invites us to follow our worst impulses. He invites us to be our worst selves. He invites us to view some people as less than human. And in doing so, he invites us, again and again, to participate in all manner of vitriol and violence. No, Donald Trump did not cause the massacre of 50 people in New Zealand, but his rhetoric sure invited it.

Brian L. Ott, a professor of communication studies and director of the TTU Press at Texas Tech University, is co-author, with Greg Dickinson, of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”