Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., said his office received more death threats in 2017 than all past years added together, comments that came as he voiced concern that the Left was becoming “angrier and angrier.”
“My fear is this is the playbook of a lot of our brothers and sisters on the Left — they’re going to get fringier and fringier, louder and louder, angrier and angrier, and as you and I know, we sometimes have some folks in our society who aren’t completely healthy,” Schweikert said during an interview on “Plaidcast,” a podcast hosted by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.
“And we had more death threats last year, in my office, even one towards my little girl, than we’ve ever had in all the other years combined and my fear is that this rage that is being generated for political turnout is actually really becoming unhealthy for our political society,” he added.
Duffy said that debate and arguments are supposed to occur, but added “after we have winners we kind of step back and let them govern.”
[Also read: Salena Zito: The road back to civility]
Schweikert, who was first elected in 2010, said that “there’s an absolute attempt to dehumanize anyone who disagrees” and argued that the strength of the economy was prompting Democrats to dehumanize the GOP.
The comments come after Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., advocated for liberals to heckle members of the Trump administration if they were seen out in public, comments that fellow Democrats pushed back upon.
“Already you have members of your cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants. We have protesters taking up at their house who are saying, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep,’” Waters said on Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles.
“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” she added. “And you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”
[Related: Trump rips left’s harassment of staff, ‘not on my watch’]
