Is the mainstream media finally going to start asking President Joe Biden some hard questions and holding him to account for what he says?

Probably not, but NBC News's Lester Holt did ask Biden during an exclusive interview to explain his comments on July 8 when he said it was "time to put Trump in the bullseye," a reference that could be construed as telling others to target him--like in a shooting.

"You said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye. There's some dispute of the context, but you appreciate that words matter," Holt said in a clip released Monday ahead of the full interview.

'I didn't say crosshairs,' Biden answered, telling Holt that he meant he wanted to see more "focus on" Trump's policies.

"Look the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was, there was very little focus on Trump's agenda," Biden continued.

What he meant

Holt seemed to accept this answer and went on to give Biden plenty of airtime to call Trump a liar and claim that he would be a "dictator on day one," an accusation taken out of context from something Trump said months ago.

Trump's dictator comment actually meant he would work on day one to undo as many of Biden's overreaching executive orders as he could--equating using executive orders with being a dictator.

Once he had completed his day one mission to undo Biden's executive orders, however, he said his time as a dictator would end and democracy would once again rule the day.

Holt did finally ask Biden if he had done any "soul searching" about how his comments about Trump could be misused by people who were "off balance."

"Look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy which is real when a president says things like he says?" Biden said. "Do you just not say anything because it might incite somebody?"

The rhetoric

And to be honest, Biden has a point here. Someone who is "off balance" will misconstrue any number of innocent comments and hear what they want to hear.

However, the overall level to which Trump has been demonized by the left is way beyond the pale. Any time you call someone a "threat to democracy," it's bound to get the extremists in either party riled up.

They have not treated Trump like a person, which is a big step toward someone feeling like they can take him out without impunity.

It's one of the things that bothers me personally about Trump's mean tweets, but he seems to have toned them down recently and is acting much more statesmanlike than our current commander-in-chief, at least in my opinion.

Voters seem to agree, since he is significantly higher in the polls than he was in either 2016 or 2020, compared to his Democrat opponent.