After the assassination attempt on Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and other Republican members of Congress, I wrote that “the caustic and toxic gasoline of hate speech”

was inviting someone “to light the match that will ignite a bond fire of political assassinations…”

A year later the rhetoric and actions of the left have gotten worse and borders on incitement to violence against those who implement and support the Trump agenda. Unfortunately, it is encouraged by little condemnation and therefore tacit approval of much of the Democratic and mainstream media leadership.

A few examples: Entertainer Samantha Bee calling the President’s daughter a “c***; actor Robert De Nero bringing a Tony Award audience to its feet applauding his “f***” Trump tirade; actor Peter Fonda calling for putting the president’s young son in a cage with pedophiles, wanting White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ children to be kidnapped and Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to be “put in a cage… naked whipped … while being filmed…”

As if these hateful comments were not enough, the anti-Trump crowd has turned up the heat with in-your-face public confrontations of Trump officials: • Protesters invaded a Washington, D.C. restaurant to harass Secretary Nielsen. They were within feet of her table while her security detail appeared helpless — anyone in the mob could have taken a shot. They also protested at her home.

• Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant. Now, she and her family will get Secret Service protection at their home. • Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was harassed and subjected to profanity-laced verbal assaults at a movie theatre in Tampa.

• Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and her husband Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Ky.) were harassed leaving a Georgetown University event.

The icing on the political hate-cake was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) urging people to harass Trump officials and “tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere…”

Waters’ rant was a bit over the line even for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and several other Democrats who were forced to condemn her message.

However, Schumer, Pelosi and their Democrat colleagues have not, that I have seen or heard, gotten around to condemning the “Nazi mania” of some of their colleagues and journalist friends who have compared the president’s policies on dealing with the Southern border with Hitler’s concentration camps.

MSNBC pundit Donny Deutsch went so far as to say that anyone who voted for Donald Trump was a “Nazi.”

In an article entitled “Trump’s Critics Desecrate the Holocaust,” writer Jay Winik wrote that the “comparison to the Holocaust is an obscene lie.”

He quoted MSNBC host Joe Scarborough who said that “just like the Nazis said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back.”

Not to be outdone, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden tweeted a photo of railroad tracks leading to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Hats off to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who lost family at the death camp, for challenging Hayden on his comparison: “As bad as the policy may be, it is not Auschwitz.”

We have heard few, if any, words condemning such rhetoric from Democrat leaders, liberal media commentators, or Jewish organizations such as the AntiDefamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Deutsch, Scarborough and others so in love with the Holocaust-border comparison should read Winik’s article. It graphically described the horror of cattle car like trains packed with Jews arriving at Auschwitz after a harrowing two-to-three day trip “with little air or light, no food and virtually no water.”

He described the “…chaos, confusion and horror…the odor of burning human flesh and hair” where prisoners “didn’t know that most of them would be ash within hours.”

Things are so toxic that many Democrats, liberal pundits, and leftists are comparing those who perpetrated such horrors to Trump voters and the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — 40 percent of whom are Hispanic — and making them targets.

As reported in The Daily Caller, the radical violent group Antifa tweeted out a list of over “1,500 ICE agents’ identities.” There’s even a growing “Occupy Ice” movement spreading throughout the nation calling for the abolition of ICE, closing down ICE facilities, and, in some cases, calling for the killing of ICE agents.

Several members of Congress have jumped aboard the “ICE is evil” express train advocating the abolition of ICE. The newest passenger is presidential “wannabe” Senator Kamala Harris (D-Ca.)

who now wants to tear ICE down and “start from scratch.”

Talk about hypocritical exploitation of an issue for political gain, just a few months ago in March, Harris told MSNBC that “ICE has a purpose,” “ICE has a role,” “ICE should exist…”

And let’s not omit those late-night talkshow hosts who further pollute the septic tank political environment by their vicious, vitriolic, not-so-funny personal attacks on Trump and, recently, Sarah Sanders.

These name callers, protesters, and their enabling supporters in Washington, Hollywood — and the major media — should not be surprised if the consequences of their anti-Trump rhetoric inspires one of their crazed leftist disciples to assassinate one of those against whom they so soundly spew hate. They should not be surprised if there is retribution.

It is only a matter of time. The only question is who the victim or victims will be.

Clarence V. McKee is president of McKee Communications, Inc., a government, political, and media relations consulting firm in Florida. He held several positions in the Reagan administration as well as in the Reagan presidential campaigns.