The most shocking part of Trump’s comments is what our reaction says about us

Listening to the president at a rally these days is a mix of deja vu and word salad, but his decade-long project of division remains abnormal and dangerous

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Donald Trump’s campaign rallies can be repetitive. Very repetitive. He calls himself the “greatest” president leading the “greatest” movement inside the “greatest” economy. He rails against “Dumocrats” for the “transgender mutilization” of children. He lambasts the “fake news” and reheats election lies. He describes illegal immigration as an “invasion” and recites the poem The Snake.

If we were all frogs being slowly boiled alive, we’ve now reached the stage of blackened toad. After a decade of this, presidential utterances that would once have caused outrage are met with a shrug. We are no longer shockable. Or so we thought.