The arsonist complains about the smoke

I nearly choked on my vanilla slice.

There was Donald Trump, sitting down with 60 Minutes, solemnly warning that America has become more violent because of the language used by Democrats.

For a moment, I wondered if I’d misheard. Then I realised the problem wasn’t the audio – it was the audacity.

This is, after all, the same man who once mused that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters. The same man who found “very fine people” among white supremacists. The same man who has flirted, more than once, with the idea that political opponents are not just wrong, but treasonous – and therefore, in his telling, potentially executable.

And now – now – he’s worried about tone.

It’s a remarkable pivot. Not quite a conversion on the road to Damascus, more a U-turn on the highway to hypocrisy, taken at full speed, indicator firmly off.

Because Donald Trump doesn’t just participate in inflammatory rhetoric – he perfected it. He refined it, repeated it, and ultimately built a political identity around it. Outrage isn’t a byproduct of his politics; it is the product. Every grievance amplified, every opponent caricatured, every disagreement elevated into an existential threat.

If American politics is a shouting match, Trump didn’t just raise his voice – he handed out megaphones and set the rules.

And yet, in the aftermath of a genuinely frightening breach at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner – where an armed man forced his way toward a room full of journalists and officials – the president’s instinct was not introspection, but deflection. Not reflection, but accusation.

Blame the Democrats. Blame their words. Blame, in effect, anyone but the man in the mirror.

It takes a certain kind of audacity to spend years dousing the political landscape in petrol, only to stand in the flames and complain about the heat.

That, in essence, is the Trump method: provoke, inflame, deny, repeat. Cast the spark, then claim the smoke came from somewhere else.

And if you say it often enough, loudly enough, and with sufficient indignation, a portion of the audience will nod along – megaphones already in hand.

The rest of us are left staring at the contradiction, pastry crumbs suspended mid-air, wondering how the loudest voice in the room became the most aggrieved by the noise.

Trump is right about one thing: language matters.

It shapes reality. It sets the temperature. It tells people who to fear – and, sometimes, who to blame.

Which is precisely why his words matter more than most.

And why they cannot be so easily excused.

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