One would think that the party that just inspired an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol would take serious care to not sound over the top and especially not sound dangerous. One would think.

Moreover, anyone with any legal or political training knows that if you must whine or must make a threat of some kind, you do it with your voice, in the moment, when you can claim you misspoke. You do not whine on paper, you do not threaten on paper, you do not do so with the formality of paper, and especially in a letter. When it comes in a letter, people know with certainty that it was intentional.

But that is where today’s GOP stands. Today, the GOP Rep. Chip Roy overtly threatened AOC in a letter to Nancy Pelosi demanding an apology for Ted Cruz.

Apology for what? For calling Cruz out on his election recount move that spurred on the riots. On Thursday, AOC told Cruz – and the world – on Twitter:

I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me m**rderd 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,” she wrote. “Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me k*lled. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

AOC used a word that is hard to shove through some platforms and thus we use ** for two letters as much as possible. Now, we wouldn’t have used that word if we were in AOC’s place and we don’t believe she should have used it. The word used is a crime that requires an intention we don’t think Cruz had. He did what he did recklessly but without the intention to have a fatality. But we absolutely do think she put it perfectly in “… any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.”

She was fully in her right to defend herself because Ted Cruz did put everyone in danger, and even his hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, called for Cruz to resign. AOC didn’t make a radical statement.

And yet Chip Roy certainly radicalized a threat back to AOC through his letter to Nancy Pelosi:

“If Representative Ocasio-Cortez does not apologize immediately, we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement,”

Unlike AOC’s statement, the above is an unequivocal threat. There is no “alternative way,” never mind one that they are “forced to find.” This is an overt threat, by a man who is a MAGA with MAGA followers that definitely have the ability to read code.

This is dangerous and it comes at the most dangerous time, it is not coming in a vacuum. Roy intended to scare AOC and perhaps doesn’t even care if something “happens to her” because his MAGA horde took it upon themselves to be the alternative means to condemn a flawed but well-earned statement.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak