President Donald Trump is more than just the man. He’s also a movement — and that movement is dangerous, says one White House insider and a former politician.
“I had a former client, member of Congress, who in 2017, he supported Ted Cruz, right? This guy was not a radical, not some flaming Republican RINO. [He endorsed] Jeb Bush first and Ted Cruz. And then at the end, endorsed Trump,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson told “Left Hook” host Wajahat Ali. “… The very first town hall after Trump has inaugurated, he goes and he's in the town hall meeting and a guy stands up, red hat guy, and says, ‘are you going to vote with Mr. Trump 100 percent of the time?”
Wilson said his client answered “probably not ... if it's bad for the people in our district. I'm going to support you first.”
But the red hat guy wasn’t through with him, and demanded again if the legislator would support Trump 100 percent.” Again, the legislator demurred, putting voters over Trump.
[When it was over] his wife had received 10 death threats about their children,” said Wilson. “Their children's school had been doxxed. The wife's workplace had been doxxed. And he left Congress. He was like, [screw] it, I'm out. These people will kill me. And this was not a liberal. This was not a Democrat. This was not a progressive.”
“And that is only continuing,” Wilson raged. “January 6th, in part, was a success for Trump because members of Congress knew he would send a mob to murder them. And so these guys have lived in fear for so long, they have no moral standing at all.”
Ninety-nine percent of threats, death threats, swatting, doxxing and bullying in this country “comes from the right,” said Wilson, growing angrier.
“The people that have threatened us ... who have crawled over our fence and banged on our door, the people who have pulled guns on us in the last 10 years, they have — every single one of them — been MAGA,” said Wilson. “In my 35-year career as a Republican consultant, I got one death threat from one Democratic-leaning person, and it turned out he was severely mentally ill. I get a death threat every day or two. And it's been that way for 10 years because you can be murdered if you oppose Trump. That's okay with the MAGA base. And the truth of the matter is [Republicans] are living in fear. They live in terror of being murdered by crazy people.”
Ali referenced Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who served as assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during Trump’s first administration before she testified about Trump’s alleged attempt to sic MAGA zealots on his own vice president during the January 6 riots.
“Donald Trump threw him to the wolves and said, ‘all right, have at him. Go get him. He's a traitor.’ So, Republicans see this and they're like, ‘all we need is Trump to target us, and then there'll be stochastic terrorism against us,’” said Ali.
Meanwhile the politically-motivated murders of people like Melissa Hortman and others keep racking up as the GOP gets more radicalized, Ali added.
“And the three white men who tried to kill Donald Trump are all former Trump voters, white men with guns, former Trump voters,” Ali pointed out.
