Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan pushed back against fellow Republican Ken Paxton’s chilling Election Day warning about left-wing violence, revealing that he himself has faced death threats from someone on the far right.
The telling remarks came during CNN’s Election Day coverage Tuesday, as host Erin Burnett played a clip of the Trump-backed Texas attorney general warning voters about political violence in an interview with MAGA commentator Benny Johnson.
“You’re not safe either. You may be next,” Paxton warned, invoking the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, as Americans headed to the polls. “These people are shooting our people because they don’t agree with them.”
Phelan, a Republican state lawmaker who served two terms as House speaker, wasn’t buying the argument.
“I don’t think it resonates with the average voter,” he said. “And let me just say that this goes both ways.”
“I still have a trial right now of an individual from the far right who’s threatened to kill me back home,” he continued. “He actually said that it was his First Amendment right to threaten to kill me.”
Phelan said heated rhetoric from both sides has made it harder to persuade people to seek public office.
“I take issue with that comment right there that somehow one side or the other side has a monopoly on terrible, terrible ideas and terrible, hateful rhetoric,” he said. “It comes from both sides. And we both need to stand down and get back to the issues that matter.”
Republican donor Dan Eberhart echoed Phelan’s criticism after Burnett highlighted an Election Day post from Donald Trump Jr. urging Americans to “vote like the other side will kill you for talking.”
“That’s not the closing message that you want,” Eberhart said.