The harassment, bullying, and threats continue against anyone who criticizes Donald Trump. Liz Mair, whose SuperPAC ran an ad featuring the GQ photo shoot of Melania Trump, is getting deluged with threats and has seen her home address published. Her mother has urged her not to leave the house.
“This is what life will be like under Trump,” conservative blogger Bethany Mandel told MSNBC. After she criticized the candidate on Twitter and in blog posts, she was routinely harassed by apparent Trump supporters.
As a result, Mandel recently bought a .22 Magnum revolver after receiving a seemingly an endless tirade of violent threats online. She said she was called a “slimy Jewess” and received death threats sent to her private Facebook account. Mandel reported it to her local police department, who she said didn’t take it very seriously.
The pattern is familiar. Someone criticizes Trump, he or his people circulate false stories suggesting that the person concerned had previously begged Trump for a job or for money and had been refused. Then the vile sewer of racist, anti-Semitic, and every other kind of loathsome filth circulates online. This is gangster stuff. That some members of the Republican Party are sanitizing and normalizing Trump (yes you Senator Sessions, former Speaker Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham) makes them complicit in this slide into brutishness.