This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

That an out-of-control extremist tried to assassinate President Donald Trump during a campaign event on Saturday was a surprise, but it really shouldn't have been that big of a surprise.

It's because, "For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides. That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy, unleash 'death squads' and make homosexuals and reporters 'disappear.'"

That’s the verdict delivered from Jonathan Turley, a prominent legal commentator, constitutional expert in his testimony to Congress and law professor at George Washington University.

He explained, "President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric. In 2022, Biden held his controversial speech before Independence Hall where he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Biden recently referenced the speech and has embraced the claims that this could be our last democratic election."

He said it's not the nation's first "age of rage," but it might be the most dangerous.

"Some of us have been objecting for years that this rage rhetoric is a dangerous political pitch for the nation. While most people reject the hyperbolic claims, others take it as true. They believe that homosexuals are going to be 'disappeared' as claimed on ABC's 'The View' or that the Trump 'death squads' are now green lighted by a conservative Supreme Court, as claimed by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow."

He continued, "Rage is addictive and contagious. It is also liberating. It allows people a sense of license to take actions that would ordinarily be viewed as repulsive."

It started as soon as Trump was elected, with entertain Kathy Griffin's stunt where she held a "bloody, severed head" of Trump.

"For months, people have heard politicians and press call Trump 'Hitler' and the GOP a Nazi movement. Some compared stopping Trump to stopping Hitler in 1933. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., declared Trump 'is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated," the column explained,

Goldman later backtracked.

Turley noted he doesn't think those engaged in "rage rhetoric" actually want violence.

"But they have knowingly created conditions for extremist views and, yes, extremist actions."

And the media's culpability is clear, as it denounces such language from the right, "while largely ignoring the same language on the left."

Such as threats against conservative Supreme Court justices before the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh.

Turley explained, "Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., went to the steps of the Supreme Court and called out Kavanaugh by name: 'I want to tell you, (Justice Neil) Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.'"

Later, Nicholas Roske went arrested year the Kavanaugh's home, caught in in an alleged assassination plot.

"When the president (Biden) is claiming that the election may end democracy in the nation, it can be heard as much as a license as a warning, particularly when he adds 'we're done talking about the debate, it's time to put Trump in a bull's-eye.'"

The attack, he said, didn't happen in a vacuum.

"It occurred in a time when our leaders long abandoned reason for rage."