Donald Trump s 2017 inaugural speech was dark.

That was some weird shit , former President George W. Bush reportedly said at the time.

Trump portrayed an America overrun by undocumented immigrants, poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation and crime and gang and drugs.

He was going to take back America and make it great again.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now, he declared.

But the past four years with Trump in the White House have been just as violent and dark as his inaugural speech. Its been a time of immense pain and suffering , particularly for minorities and people of color who have been demonized by the president.

American carnage is really his legacy. Its not what he fought against, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Trump ended his presidency by bringing the carnage right to the U.S. Capitol, the same spot where he stood and gave his inaugural address in 2017.

On Jan. 6, at a Stop the Steal rally to challenge the results of the 2020 election, Trump encouraged his supporters to walk to the Capitol, telling them they would never take back our country with weakness .

They listened. They climbed walls, broke through windows and attacked police officers to break into the building on behalf of the president.

They werent just overheated protesters. They planned to capture and assassinate elected officials , according to federal prosecutors. And their primary targets were politicians whom Trump himself had criticized including his own vice president. Trump was furious that Mike Pence was going to carry out his duties by certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the election, and he told his supporters to make him do the right thing .

The carnage brought on by Trump resulted in the deaths of five people , including a police officer.

Hes always signaled what he was thinking, what he was going to do. And that language of carnage was what he had planned for us, added Carol Anderson, the chair of African American Studies at Emory University.

What were seeing is a man who really gets off on violence. He gets off on the pain, he gets off on the bloodshed, she added.

Trump has been inciting violence since the very first day of his campaign, when he said Mexican immigrants were rapists who were bringing drugs and bringing crime.

He consistently invited violence against protesters at his rallies, urging the crowd to go after them. At a rally in 2016, Trump said: If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them , would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. That same year, he was thrilled when one of his supporters did punch a Black protester , later saying, thats what we need a little bit more of.

Journalists, people of color, Democratic politicians and others have all been targets of his violent rhetoric.