I have my share of grievances with Donald Trump and his movement. I don’t think it is a conservative political movement, and I am a conservative. I don’t think that the movement or its signature candidate are electorally viable, and I want to keep Democrats from winning as many electoral offices as possible. I don’t think the way Donald Trump conducts himself is befitting of a well-adjusted adult, much less a president, and I don’t think his presence on the political stage is healthy for our civics or our collective psychological health. But do I think Donald Trump is the leader of a death cult who is driving millions of Americans to suicidal acts of violence in his name? Of course not.

That is apparently not the view shared by MSNBC commentator and former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi. His latest opinion piece for MSNBC.com was garnished with the following search-engine-optimization headline designed to drive traffic and readership: “Utah man killed by FBI joins a growing list of people willing to die for Trump.”

That would certainly generate interest, even if it lacks anything resembling prudence. But the site’s for-publication headline isn’t any less provocative. “Utah man killed by the FBI shows how far some Trump supporters are willing to go,” it read.

What we call in this business the “news hook” for Figliuzzi’s take — the contemporaneous event that serves as the platform from which an author launches into a polemic — is the arrest-related killing of a clearly disturbed individual who made specific threats against Joe Biden on social media. He was killed by FBI agents when he resisted arrest during an early morning raid on his Provo home on August 9. The objective scarcity of headline-generating events like these should, in fact, reassure anxious opinion writers. For Figliuzzi, however, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The MSNBC commentator cites a July report from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats to justify his claim. “From April 6, 2023, to June 26, 2023, Americans agreeing that ‘the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency’ increased from 4.5% to 7%,” the report reads, “or the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults.” Figliuzzi rests his presumption that many millions of Americans are functionally pro-Trump sleeper agents standing by for the former president’s cue on the events of January 6. But that terrible event and its aftermath should reassure the author. As Figliuzzi observed, when he had maximum power to mobilize his supporters to an event culminating in subversion and violence, Trump’s “stop the steal” rally attracted roughly 30,000 attendees — of which 1,000 committed prosecutable offenses.

That’s not great, but it’s certainly better than the prospect of up to 18 million Americans — your friends and neighbors likely among them — being functionally a fifth column, lying in wait to execute a murderous campaign of violence designed to restore Trump to power.

We should not dismiss the unsettling number of poll respondents who flirt with, at least rhetorically, the idea that political violence is legitimate or justified. But this is not a Republican problem alone.

In 2017, UCLA professor John Villasenor and the Brookings Institution found that about one-fifth of currently matriculated college students told pollsters it was acceptable to engage in violence to silence a challenging speaker. Taking Figliuzzi’s approach, that means just under 4 million of the nation’s 19 million college students were sociopathic time bombs ready to blow at any second. Likewise, a 2022 Ipsos survey found that 22 percent of Democrats (compared with 14 percent of Republicans) “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “Political violence against those I disagree with is acceptable.” Are we to believe that 10 million of the country’s 49 million registered Democrats are gearing up for civil conflict? The very premise is preposterous.

Heck, the same survey Figliuzzi cites in his piece also indicates that 16 percent of Democrats agree with the statement, “Use of force is justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing” — a figure that has more than doubled since January. Another 16 percent of Democratic voters support violence to restore the status quo the Supreme Court overturned in Dobbs. Those Democrats join what this institution maintains are the roughly “31 million adults” who believe restoring a federal right to abortion via violence is justified.

Figliuzzi’s commentary may be good for clicks, but it’s not great for the discourse. It does no one any good to propagandize the threat of political violence. He’s right insofar as “law enforcement can’t afford to be less than vigilant,” but irresponsibly hyping the threat ensures that the civilians who also need to be on guard are only going to tune him and others like him out.