The fault does not lie, as President Trump insists, with those in the media (e.g., “lowly rated CNN”) who have the temerity to question and criticize him. It is the job of the press to hold those in power to account, and the press has recently done a magnificent job of discharging its constitutional responsibility. Has the media gotten everything right? Of course not. But it has gotten a lot more right than a president who lies with impunity and abandon.

Nor does the fault lie, as Trump’s supposedly reasonable supporters insist, with “both sides.” For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), tweeted: “Why is it so hard to accept that a clearly deranged man carried out deranged acts? The ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories on one side & the ‘it’s Trump’s fault’ on the other shows how unhinged politics has become. This isn’t incivility. It’s a society that has lost common sense.”

I, too, have criticized the incivility of Democrats. Hounding officials in restaurants is a mistake. Comparing Trump to Hitler is wrong. But those errors cannot be spoken of in the same breath with terrible crimes such as sending pipe bombs or opening fire in a synagogue.

To be clear, the investigation into Saturday’s attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh is only just beginning, and there is more to learn about Sayoc’s apparent infatuation with Trump. But it also should be clear to all that holding the president of the United States to account for his hateful rhetoric is not the same thing as subscribing to lunatic “false flag” conspiracy theories that ricochet around the right-wing world. In their eagerness to protect their leader, Republicans are guilty of the very sin they have spent years decrying — false moral equivalence.

Extremism has been present in America for a long time. But Trump is applying a match to the kindling.