At last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a gunman, armed with multiple weapons stormed a security checkpoint, fired shots, and forced the evacuation of the president of the United States, journalists, lawmakers, and military leaders. A Secret Service agent was hit, saved only by a bulletproof vest.

This isn’t normal. It isn’t random.

And no matter how loudly the MAGA movement insists, it isn’t the fault of Donald Trump’s critics. The argument that criticism of Donald Trump somehow incites violence against him isn’t just wrong. It’s an inversion of reality so brazen that it demands to be confronted directly.

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In the aftermath of the shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump and his allies are already advancing the argument that criticism of Trump is responsible for violence against him.

Think about that after a decade of rhetoric that includes calls for punishment against political enemies, praise for supporters who use force, and language that casts opponents as traitors, vermin, or existential threats.

The claim is that criticism — speech, journalism, dissent — is the danger. It’s absurd. It’s dishonest.

And it’s dangerous because it attempts to criminalize dissent, while absolving the most powerful megaphone in American politics of any responsibility for the climate it has helped create.