The amount of death threats against elected officials has surged in recent years — and it's a key part of how former President Donald Trump and his supporters have ensured that Republican officials at every level have remained loyal to him, wrote Zack Beauchamp for Vox.
"Across the board and around the country, data reveals that threats against public officials have risen to unprecedented numbers — to the point where 83 percent of Americans are now concerned about risks of political violence in their country," wrote Beauchamp, noting that while the threats have come from every political persuasion, they are most prominent from the MAGA movement.
"Trump’s most fanatical followers have created a situation where challenging him carries not only political risks but also personal ones."
Some of the most prominent of these incidents were aimed at Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who is currently suing failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for spreading conspiracy theories about him that put his life in danger.
Richer, noted Beauchamp, faced constant harassment from Trump supporters convinced the 2020 election was stolen with his complicity, even being physically manhandled at one local GOP event.
"Richer tried to tell them it wasn’t true, hoping his long track record in the state Republican Party would give him some credibility. It did not," Beauchamp wrote.
ALSO READ: 'You lost Ivanka': Trump the target of bogus political action committees
He was deluged with increasingly violent voicemails, including one which said, “You ... renege on this deal or give them any more troubles, your a-- will never make it to your next little board meeting.”
He had armed security guarding his office by the time he was overseeing the 2022 tally.
According to the report, members of Congress received 900 threats in 2016, and by 2021 it reached 7,500 — and that leaves out all the other officials who get targeted like judges, mayors, and election officials. Trump supporters are driving much of this in order to scare the rest of the GOP into compliance with their demands, the report said.
"No figure in American politics commands Trump’s devoted following; no figure is as capable of heightening the stakes of American politics to the breaking point," wrote Beauchamp.
Moreover, after January 6 when members were weighing whether to finally break from the former president and impeach or convict him, "fear of physical harm, of someone killing them or their families, held some of these Republicans back from voting to impeach him. The threat even became a tool of peer pressure — Republicans citing the danger of speaking out to keep each other in line."
"Never before has it been more important for Republican officials to stand up for the integrity of the American electoral system," he concluded somberly. "But they haven’t faced this level of threat in their political lives — in fact, no currently living elected official has."
