Some people apparently learned nothing from Jan. 6, 2021, when the reckless rhetoric of a sitting president flung a mob at America's seat of government. Donald Trump's poisonous lies and his "fight like hell" exhortation to his followers were mere words, but those followers translated those words into physical violence that cost lives and continues to undermine democracy today.

It's been said before, but it can't be said enough, especially these days: Words matter.

Enter Mike Huckabee. Remember him? The former Arkansas governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate ran his state as a moderate and was an adherent to the GOP's too-brief "compassionate conservatism" movement of the early 2000s.

That was then. Like so much of his party, Huckabee in the MAGA era has clearly fallen off the edge. Back in the public sphere as a right-wing broadcast host, he made news last weekend by crossing the line on violent rhetoric in defense of an indefensible former president.

Echoing the reckless pronouncements of, among many others, Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, Huckabee during his TBN show baselessly accused President Joe Biden of orchestrating the federal indictments of Trump for political gain.

Citing zero evidence, Huckabee compared those legitimate criminal cases to the tactics of leaders of "banana republics" against their political enemies. That's a deeply ironic allegation for a defender of a president who made "lock them up" his rally cry against his own political opponents. Do these people even hear themselves?

All of that has become rote in today's GOP. But Huckabee decided to take that next step — as too many of his fellow right-wing populists have lately — of warning of violence. Which is pretty close to threatening violence.

"If these tactics end up working to keep Trump from winning or even running in 2024," Huckabee warned, "it is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets."

Ballots/bullets. What clever alliteration. And what a clear, ringing signal to the most angry and delusional among Trump's followers, many of whom are still today ready to "fight like hell."

That signal may carry some troubling gravitas coming from a relatively well-known Republican who also happens to be the father of Trump's former press secretary, current Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

It would be comforting to suppose Huckabee is an outlier in his irresponsibility, but the fact is, violent rhetoric has become distressingly common in American politics these days — especially in the MAGA movement.

In the first GOP presidential debate last month, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trumpiest of the other candidates running for the nomination, declared from the debate stage that "We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we're in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war."

In June, in response to Trump's first federal indictment, Rep. Andy Briggs, R-Ariz., tweeted: "We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye."

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is often named among potential Trump running mates, was more explicit this summer in a speech aimed at Biden and the Justice Department: "If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have to go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I'm going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA."

The potential effects of that kind of rhetoric cannot be considered in a vacuum. These are angry times, and the multiple prosecutions faced by Trump — which, whatever the outcomes, were brought about by his own actions — are feeding that anger in dangerous ways. One University of Chicago study in this year estimated that some 16 million American adults agree that "the use of force is justified to prevent the prosecution of Donald Trump."

Words matter. And the reckless words being deployed lately by Trump's supporters are sparks in the political tinderbox that is the MAGA movement.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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