Donald Trump has come up with all kind of creative attacks against Kamala Harris, but late last week, the Republican rolled out a new label he hadn’t used before. NBC News reported:

In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. ‘She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,’ said Trump. … ‘She really is, if you think about it.’

So let me get this straight. As recently as May, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies. This is not to be confused with a different jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse, or the case in which a court found that Trump oversaw a business that engaged in systemic fraud.

The former president has also surrounded himself with other criminals, has demonstrated a habit of issuing scandalous pardons to politically aligned criminals and, if elected to a second term, has promised to issue even more pardons to politically aligned criminals, including those who violently clashed with police officers.

While we’re at it, let’s also note that Trump is effectively out on bail; he’s awaiting criminal sentencing; and he’s still facing pending felony charges across multiple jurisdictions. (The GOP candidate has, for the record, pleaded not guilty.)

His opponent, meanwhile, is a former prosecutor who hasn’t been accused of any crimes whatsoever.

And yet, there was Trump on Friday, telling an audience — out loud and in apparent seriousness — that the Democratic vice president “really is” a “criminal,” if you “think about it.”

Of course, Trump “really is” a criminal, whether one thinks about it or not.

A few days earlier, the Republican said at a rally that as far as he’s concerned, President Joe Biden was “essentially convicted” in the classified documents matter, despite the fact that the Democratic incumbent was never charged or accused of criminal wrongdoing.

To know anything about Trump is to know that he lies uncontrollably. The former president also has a strange “I’m rubber, you’re glue” habit, which makes it all but inevitable that he’ll accuse his rivals of being criminals because he’s been labeled a criminal. With this in mind, perhaps the GOP candidate’s “she’s a criminal” nonsense might seem forgettable.

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But I think there’s more to this.

For one thing, as NBC News’ report added, Trump is “ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals,” and the recent list includes everyone from Harris to Biden, Google to CBS News, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to members of the Jan. 6 committee.

Given Trump’s eagerness to use federal power to retaliate against his perceived foes and his demonstrated willingness to try to prosecute those who bother him, it’s difficult to simply shrug off his rhetoric as meaningless.

But there’s a related dimension to this: As the public conversation continues about whether Trump deserves to be seen as a “fascist,” it’s important to emphasize that a key element of authoritarian regimes is delegitimizing political opposition.

“This is out of the autocratic playbook,” NYU historian and professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat told NBC News. “As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power, or exposes their corruption, or releases information that’s harmful to them in any way becomes illegal.

“He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orban does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she added. “Just as there’s a divide now because of this brainwashing about who is a patriot and who is a criminal about Jan. 6, right? In the same way, telling the truth in any area — journalists, scientists, even people like me, anybody who is engaged in objective inquiry, prosecutors, of course — they become criminal elements, and they need to be shut down.”