The MAGA movement has grown so menacing that even loyal Republicans now fear for their lives, veteran GOP strategist Rick Wilson said this week.
Speaking with Wajahat Ali on the "Left Hook" podcast — the same conversation in which he predicted a Republican midterm blowout — the Lincoln Project co-founder recounted what happened to a former client, a member of Congress who backed Jeb Bush, then Ted Cruz, before endorsing Donald Trump late in the 2016 primary. He was no radical, Wilson said.
The trouble started at the lawmaker's first town hall after Trump's inauguration. A man in a red hat demanded to know whether the congressman would vote with Trump 100 percent of the time. When the lawmaker said he would put his district first, "his wife had received 10 death threats about their children," Wilson said.
Wilson argued the overwhelming share of political intimidation now comes from one direction, estimating that 99 percent of the threats, doxxing and swatting he sees originate on the right. Everyone who has pulled a gun on him or pounded on his door over the past decade, he claimed, has been MAGA. Across a 35-year career, he counted exactly one death threat from a Democratic-leaning person — a man who turned out to be severely mentally ill. Now, he said, he gets one every day or two.
"You can be murdered if you oppose Trump. That's okay with the MAGA base," Wilson said, describing Republican officeholders as living in terror of the president.
Wilson tied the menace to a party fracturing in once-solid red states, with Trump himself now facing what could sink the GOP this fall.