In 2018, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson — a former GOP strategist and outspoken Never Trump conservative — told The Observer why he obtained a license to carry a concealed weapon: death threats from Donald Trump supporters.
Wilson explained, "It's not a trivial macho posture thing. I carry because I've had people approach me in public and threaten to kill me."
That was six years ago. Since then, the problem of MAGA violence has only gotten worse — a problem that conservative journalist/author David French vividly describes in an opinion column published by the New York Times on February 18.
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French notes that he has been inundated with death threats because of his criticism of Trump and that countless judges, lawyers, prosecutors, journalists, election workers and politicians live with the threat of MAGA violence. The problem is so bad, the journalist laments, that Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis "had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump" — as they feared for their safety.
"If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement," French argues, "are you aware of the price they might pay if they did?.... Willis received an assassination threat so specific that one evening, she had to leave her office incognito while a body double wearing a bulletproof vest courageously pretended to be her and offered a target for any possible incoming fire. Don't think for a moment that this is unusual today."
French continues, "Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump's federal January 6 trial, has been swatted, as has the special counsel Jack Smith…. The Colorado Supreme Court likewise endured terrible threats after it ruled that Trump was disqualified from the ballot. There is deep concern for the safety of the witnesses and jurors in Trump's various trials. Mitt Romney faces so many threats that he spends $5000 per day on security to protect his family."
French also calls out leftist violence in his column, including the riots and unrest that following George Floyd's death in 2000, but warns that MAGA violence is a more widespread threat.
"The surge in antisemitic incidents since October 7 is a sobering reminder that hatred lives on the right and the left alike," French explains. "But the tsunami of MAGA threats is different. The intimidation is systemic and ubiquitous, an acknowledged tactic in the playbook of the Trump right that flows all the way down from the violent fantasies of Donald Trump himself. It is rare to encounter a public-facing Trump critic who hasn't faced threats and intimidation."
French adds, "The threats drive decent men and women from public office. They isolate and frighten dissenters. When my family first began to face threats, the most dispiriting responses came from Christian acquaintances who concluded I was a traitor for turning on a movement whose members had expressed an explicit desire to kill my family."
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David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).