Politics

New Normal: Trump Allies Face Harassment, Protests Anywhere They Show Their Faces

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Font Size:
  • Rep. Maxine Waters encouraged people to form mobs to protest Trump administration officials in their private lives.
  • Already, a slew of Republicans have been plagued with harassment and violent threats, creating new normal.
  • House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was nearly killed in June 2017 by a liberal gunman — and threats of violence against conservatives have increased in number and frequency.

Staffers and allies of President Donald Trump face a new normal in today’s heated political environment: the potential for harassment and protests anywhere they show their faces — both in their public and private lives.

Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters shocked political observers over the weekend by encouraging liberal mobs to harass Trump officials at restaurants, gas stations and even at home.

“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 told a liberal crowd on Saturday, pledging to “win this battle.”

“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” the congresswoman added. “And you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome any more, anywhere!”

What Waters is advocating is already happening.

Left-wing activists on June 19 chased Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant.

“Kirstjen Nielsen, you’re a villain, locking up immigrant children,” chanted activists from the Democratic Socialists of America. (RELATED: Socialist Activist Who Harassed Homeland Security Secretary Works For The Department Of Justice)

CREDO Action, a progressive grassroots organization, organized a protest outside Nielsen’s home on Friday — three days after she was hounded from the Mexican restaurant.

The activists played audio of crying immigrant children outside Nielsen’s home and chanted “No justice, no sleep!” They continued shouting at the DHS secretary as she walked from her home to her car, Fox News reported.

On June 17, a protester reportedly chased Trump adviser Stephen Miller out of a Mexican restaurant, accusing him of being a “fascist.” Three days later, Univision-owned news site Splinter published Miller’s personal cell phone number to the public.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump ally, received her own hostile reception on Saturday when she attended a documentary on children’s TV host Mr. Rogers.

Protesters chased Bondi out of the theater, yelling, “shame on you!” and “you’re a horrible person!” (RELATED: Capitol Police Arrest Male Dem Operative For Assaulting Female Trump Admin Official)

A left-wing New York University professor created a database of over 1,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees’ personal information.

Members of Antifa, a far-left anarchist movement that DHS has labeled “domestic terrorists,” further circulated the list of ICE employees, accusing them of being “Nazis.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai issued a plea for civility in November 2017 after activists, upset with the FCC’s rollback of the Obama-era Net Neutrality rule, left signs outside of his house with his children’s names on them.

Screenshot/Twitter

Screenshot/Twitter

“They will come to know the truth. Dad murdered democracy in cold blood,” one sign read, informing Pai that it was “not too late” for him to change his mind about Net Neutrality.

“I understand that people are passionate about policy, but the one thing in America that should remain sacred is that families, wives and kids, should remain out of it,” Pai said at the time. “And stop harassing us at our homes.”

The signs targeting Pai’s kids didn’t mark the first time that activists had showed up outside his home.

A month after Pai’s call for civility, he was forced to cut short a speech due to a bomb threat.

Liberal activists in June 2017 took their protests to the homes of two Republican senators: Rob Portman of Ohio and John Boozman of Arkansas. The doorstep protests were meant to influence the senators’ votes on healthcare legislation.

Left-wing hostility to Republicans in the Trump era has repeatedly extended beyond protests and harassment to threats and acts of violence.

James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old who volunteered on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, in June 2017 opened fire on Republican congressmen. Hodgkinson wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, leaving him near-death

If not for Scalise’s security detail, Hodgkinson may have succeeded in his mass assassination attempt. The would-be assassin was “fueled by rage against Republican legislators,” a state’s attorney concluded after an investigation. (RELATED: Baseball Shooter’s Facebook Group Celebrated Attack)

Scalise’s office pushed back against Waters’ calls for harassment on Sunday.

“Whip Scalise knows firsthand the dangerous consequences that can result from making political differences personal and vitriolic,” Scalise spokeswoman Lauren Fine told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We are lucky to live in a country where we have the right to freely debate our differences civilly. Harassment is never an acceptable method of disagreement.”

In May 2017, Tennessee police officers arrested a liberal woman after she allegedly tried to run GOP Rep. David Kustoff off the road after a town hall on healthcare legislation.

A popular parade in Portland, Oregon was cancelled in April 2017 after threats of violence against one of the groups participating — a local Republican organization.

An email warning parade organizers promised 200 or more protesters would rush into the parade and drag the Republican marchers out, if that’s what it took to keep them from participating.

“You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely,” the email warned. Portland has been a site for organized left-wing protests, which have often turned into violent riots. (RELATED: Leader Of Portland Anti-Trump Protests Charged With Sexually Abusing A Minor)

In February 2017, a 71-year-old female staffer for California Rep. Dana Rohrbacher was knocked unconscious during an angry protest that activists staged outside the congressman’s office.

A North Carolina GOP office was firebombed a month before the 2016 election and a building adjacent to it was spray painted with a message: “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else.”

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel