MAGA Menace

[A]re you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you aware of the price they might pay if they did?

David French, who “has the receipts”:

• Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump. Even a former Georgia governor turned her down, saying, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want to have a bodyguard follow you around for the rest of your life?”
• 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.
• Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s federal Jan. 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.
• Mitt Romney faces so many threats that he spends $5,000 per day on security to protect his family.
• After Jan. 6, the former Republican congressman Peter Meijer said that at least one colleague voted not to certify the election out of fear for the safety of their family.
• In 2021, Reuters published a horrifying and comprehensive report detailing the persistent threats against local election workers.
• In my own Tennessee community, doctors and nurses who advocated wearing masks in schools were targets of screaming, threatening right-wing activists, who told one man, “We know who you are” and “We will find you.”

That’s a long list, but here’s the clincher for me:

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.

A vote for Trump is a vote for these jackboots.