After a weekend in which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant because she works for Donald Trump, Sanders called for a level of civility that would be better off directed at her boss.
Sanders opened Monday's White House press briefing by reading a brief statement in which she said, "We are allowed to disagree, but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm."
She later added, "Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and the push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."
SEE ALSO: Confused Pro-Trump protestors go after the wrong Red Hen restaurantThere's merit to what Sanders has to say here, namely the idea that America should be a place where ideas can be freely exchanged without things devolving into threats of physical violence.
But the words ring hollow coming from the mouthpiece of a president who has routinely made violence part of his rhetoric.
After all, just Monday morning, Trump seemed to make a not-so-thinly-veiled threat of violence towards Rep. Maxine Waters, who had called for the harassment of Trump administration officials.
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Besides, who could forget all those time Trump called for violence against protesters who disrupted his campaign rallies?
It didn't even stop once Trump entered office. Last summer, Trump was sure to tell police officers at a speech to "not be too nice" to suspects they were arresting.
Anyone remotely familiar with the president's Twitter feed knows he's taken the opportunity to share violent imagery directed at his rivals, like the time he tweeted a Redditor's video of a Trump WWE appearance with the CNN logo.
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Or the time Trump retweeted a GIF that was edited to make it look like a golf ball he hit had struck Hillary Clinton.
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While those GIFs may seem rather innocuous compared to some of the other examples out of Trump's mouth, they still reflect the pattern of general disrespect for any sort of civilized discourse from Trump.
And consider that just a year ago, Sanders herself said, "The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary."
Sanders denied it then and she denies it now while the President of the United States continues to make violent rhetoric -- both subtle and overt -- a regular thing. Sanders' pearl clutching is nothing but an empty gesture that belongs in the bottomless void alongside so much else from 2018.
