Actress Meryl Streep criticized President Donald Trump in her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. Demille Award at the Golden Globes Awards on Jan. 8, recalling when Trump mocked a disabled reporter at a rally in November 2015.

“The person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back,” she said. “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.”

Streep’s comment calls to mind reports of a rash of racist graffiti and hate crimes last November in the wake of Trump’s winning the election. The Southern Poverty Law Center, whose website describes as “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry,” distributed an online survey to K-12 school teachers and administrators across the nation after the election. According to their press release, out of over 10,000 respondents, more than 2,500 educators described “specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric.”

Every politician wishes that their speeches might move the American public to action. Unfortunately, this is also true of politicians employing rhetoric of hate. Trump aside, we have already witnessed how politicians’ fiery expressions can urge people towards violence.

A shooter attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in November 2015, killing three and injuring nine. During his arrest and trial, the shooter called himself a “warrior for the babies” and made statements such as “no more baby parts.”

The shooter’s comments directly reflect actions by politicians disseminating and perpetuating allegations that Planned Parenthood sells aborted fetal tissues for profit, never verified despite investigations in 12 states and a dedicated House of Representatives committee.

Videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood members discussing sales were publicized and the rhetoric became pointedly ugly. Politicians described the videos in graphic, lurid terms to advance arguments for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. For instance, Carly Fiorina, then running for Republican nomination, described the videos with sensationalist flair at a Republican debate: “watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

In a similar vein, and more recently, in the wake of the Democratic National Committee email leaks, a “Pizza-gate” conspiracy theory circulated throughout the internet. This repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory alleged that certain emails from John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, showed evidence of a child trafficking ring run by the DNC if certain culinary words were assumed to be ciphers, and that a certain pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C., was its locale.

Yet this not-even-circumstantial evidence was enough to compel a gunman last December to visit Comet Ping Pong and open fire on the premises—luckily, no one was injured.

It may seem as though only the gullible and eccentric would believe the theory: but politicians too have lent support of the conspiracy: Michael Flynn, Jr., then a member of Trump’s transition team, tweeted on Dec. 4, 2016, that “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.” (Flynn was later dismissed on Dec. 6.)

Every politician’s words are greatly publicized by nature of their profession, unsubstantiated or uninformed as they may be. And their fiery language, aggressive tone, and hateful rhetoric can spur people to radical action.

Trump must realize that his words can and do have a substantive effect on the attitudes of the American public. He can be somewhat bombastic with his warmongering and braggadocio—but even if rational people can shrug off his comments, the Colorado Springs massacre and “Pizza-gate” demonstrate that politics is indeed watched by people both irrational enough to believe unsubstantiated claims and radical enough to use violence to take action.

Politicians must be aware of the violence they can whip up through caustic rhetoric. Of all politicians, this is most true of the president—and of all presidents, this is most true of Trump.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on January 24, 2017.