This will surely come as a shock to anyone who has ever seen one of Trump's Nuremberg rallies, but now we have evidence: Trump counties hosting his hate rallies have more hate crimes -- a 226 percent increase, to be exactl

According to a study reported in The Washington Post, Trump's incendiary rhetoric may indeed encourage hate crimes.

To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred.

We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.

So is it Trump inspiring hate, or that he gravitates toward hate, or is it simply a coincidence? According to the authors:

Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best unrealistic. In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes. Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting.

Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.

What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.

It makes me wonder whether he held a rally near this recent desecration of Jewish graves with swastikas and slurs in Massachusetts.

None of this comes as a shock to anyone who has seen one of his rallies. Trump revels in aiming hate at "the other." He lives for it. He is a bigot, a white nationalist, and he empowers others who think the same way.

Now that we have proof, it is incumbent on broadcasters NOT to amplify him. No live streams, nothing. We need to contain the contagion, not spread it.