Margaret Sullivan: The connection between hateful rhetoric and terrorizing acts is glaringly obvious, but some refuse to see it

The gesture was small, but it contained multitudes.At a raucous rally in Montana last week, a Trump supporter — juiced up by the president’s crude praise of a congressman who body-slammed a reporter — looked directly at CNN reporter Jim Acosta.Then he ran his thumb across his throat. And laughed.Later, Acosta described "the Trump effect.""It has normalized and sanitized nastiness and cruelty in a way that I just never thought I would see," he said, shortly after that Montana ra