Facing death threats, some House Republicans are meeting the MAGA monster they created

Death threats. Intimidation. Family members called out by strangers.

A number of House Republicans who refuse to support right-wing Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker are suddenly learning the true language of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, a movement they have either tolerated or nurtured for years. While MAGA fury is usually directed at liberals, this time it's hitting them like unfriendly fire.

Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, after voting against Jordan, said he received an email that read: “Go f--- yourself and die if I see your face, I will whip all the hair out of your f---ing head you f---ing scumbag.”

Some Republicans are learning how it feels when MAGA attacks

Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia said in a statement that after voting against Jordan, his family started receiving death threats: "That is simply unacceptable, unforgivable, and will never be tolerated.”

Axios reported that Ferguson told other House Republicans in a Thursday meeting “that he’s had to have a sheriff stationed at his daughter’s school over death threats from the far right. Also one at his house.”

The New York Times reported that the wife of Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska "has begun sleeping with a loaded gun after receiving increasingly menacing anonymous calls and texts.”

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado said Thursday: “I've had four death threats. I've been evicted from my office in Colorado … because the landlord is mad with my voting record on the speaker issue, and everybody in the conference is getting this. ... Family members have been approached and threatened.”

With Trump, 'violence is his political project now'

This behavior is horrible and unacceptable. It’s also entirely predictable to anyone who has paid attention to a political movement forged in violent rhetoric and seemingly driven by the destruction of social and political norms.

Just recently, Trump has suggested that a top U.S. general be executed, mocked the violent hammer attack on a Democratic lawmaker’s husband and talked about shooting shoplifters.

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In March, he railed against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money investigation on Truth Social, warning of “potential death & destruction” if he is charged and calling Bragg “a degenerate psychopath.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian, told The Associated Press: “Violence is his political project now. It is the thing, besides his own victimhood, that he brings up the most.”

Folks who identify as MAGA often parrot Trump's violent rhetoric

Like their avatar, Trump loyalists often lean into bullying and threats, enamored with flexing a faux toughness that comes easy when anonymous emails and social media accounts protect them from consequences.

When Jordan became a House speaker candidate, he quickly got Trump’s blessing and the extended MAGA universe rose up, excited to see one of their own get a shot at running the show.

Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser and human embodiment of the phrase “all hat, no cattle,” ordered his Trump-obsessed podcast listeners to go after Republican holdouts: “Call them and get in their grill. Let them know what you think … Email, call their local office, all of it, burn it down. That's right. Get up in their face.”

And so they did. And it backfired, because these Republicans finally got a close look at the kind of folks they’ve been pandering to and thought, “Yikes, these people are scary. I don’t want to support this!”

That's to their credit. Fear of the MAGA base is a big reason so many Republican lawmakers have remained loyal to Trump through an insurrection and a slew of indictments. Bucking that trend, in today's chaotic and unraveling Republican Party, is downright courageous.

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MAGA enthusiasts tend to be bullies who run at the first sign of consequences

Jordan responded to the threats by putting out a statement on social media Wednesday saying, “We condemn all threats against our colleagues.”

But that has always been Trump and the broader MAGA movement’s game. Say outrageous things and then, when those statements spark chaos or violent threats, pretend that was never the point.

Of course it’s the point. It has always been the point, ever since Trump first bullied his way onto the political scene and cowed so-called normal Republicans with veiled threats and truckloads of red meat to throw at a base right-wing talk radio and television spent years priming for violence.

We saw it all culminate at the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republicans of all stripes created this MAGA monster, now they have to deal with it

Plenty of folks critical of Trump have dealt with threats and bullying over the years, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, Republican, Democrat or otherwise. But it seems a bit remarkable that so-called moderate Republicans who’ve watched all this happen, who’ve offered either full-throated or tacit support for Trump because it was in their own political interest, now need a fainting couch because the MAGA monster is attacking them.

This is your monster, Republicans. You brought this beast to life by tolerating an unmoored narcissist. You let it grow and gave it permission to lash out in all directions.

And I bet if the presidential election were tomorrow and I asked you who you’re supporting, you’d utter these two ridiculous words: Donald Trump.

Some never learn. If you put up with a dog that bites strangers, you can’t be surprised when it sinks its teeth into you.

Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk