6 months ago
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Republicans who voted against Rep. Jim Jordan as House speaker have gotten death threats. Rep. Don Bacon’s wife slept with a loaded gun following threatening phone calls. Jordan’s allies don’t see the problem.
To Rep. Scott Perry, a Jordan backer, threats are “nothing new to any member of Congress,” so talking about these specific threats is a “red herring.” But it does not sound like Bacon’s wife sleeps with a loaded gun every night, which suggests there is something new and different about these threats. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks referred to “credible death threats,” which are different from statements like “you should die.” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who has voted for Jordan but doesn’t think he can win, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “These attacks have become extremely vicious. They’re different. I have been the subject of a lot of attacks from the far right. These are different.”
Fellow Jordan ally Rep. Warren Davidson went further in dismissing the threats, according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman. At the House Republican meeting Thursday, Davidson “said it's not Team Jordan's fault that holdouts are getting death threats. They are getting the death threats, he said, because they voted against Jordan,” sources told Sherman. In a separate tweet, Sherman reported that “Davidson also said this will continue as long as people oppose Jordan for speaker.”
They had it coming. If they just would have done what Jordan wanted, they wouldn’t have been threatened. It’s not going to stop. They shouldn’t talk about it because it’s a red herring.
