A Florida man has been arrested for death threats against Democratic members of Congress. John Kless, of Broward County, left threatening voicemails at the offices of Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Eric Swalwell and Sen. Cory Booker, including ranting about Rep. Ilhan Omar and littered with racist and sexist slurs, most of which we’re not going to quote here—but if you can think of it, he probably said it.
Kless appeared especially obsessed with Omar, targeting Tlaib as another Muslim-American woman in Congress with messages for Omar, such as “It was your Taliban bitch, the one who opened up her fucking towel head mouth about how 'some people did it.’” In other words, going exactly in the direction Donald Trump has been leading his followers with his efforts to tie Omar to 9/11 and his description of her as a “sick monster.”
That wasn’t all. To Swalwell: “The day you come after our guns motherfucker is the day you'll be dead.” To Booker: “We need to kill all you motherfuckers man, every fucking one of you, man.” He has previously left “profane/harassing” messages for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Kless also expressed pro-Trump sentiments and commanded two of the Democrats to stop criticizing him—so, yeah, this is about Trump, not just some random racist operating completely on his own.
This comes just months after the spate of pipe bombs targeting media organizations and people on Donald Trump’s informal enemies list, something that has dropped out of memory remarkably fast. This is what Trump’s America looks like.