After weeks of being vilified by the national media and White House as a terrorist, racist, and radical hostage-taker out to destroy the economy, Ted Cruz (R-TX) is receiving the kind of death threats that are all-too expected after this kind of national demonization campaign. A person who identifies himself on Twitter as Troy Gilmore, Jr. listed the Senator’s homes address and suggested Cruz be taught a “street wise lesson.” Capitol Police are investigating:
The Hill reported Capitol Police were looking into the post by someone identifying himself as Troy Gilmore Jr.
The tweet, posted early Friday, said, “Take down Ted Cruz, at his home” and listed Cruz’s home address in Houston, The Hill reported.
It also said, “What goes around comes around CRUZ!!”
The Hill said the poster — using the Twitter handle @ArmyVet54 — said he had served in the U.S. Army and Navy, and posted another tweet Friday afternoon saying Cruz “needs tobe [sic] taught a street wise [sic] lesson.”
In the last couple of weeks, the hate speech directed at Cruz from the elite media has been merciless. Politico mused about drowning Cruz; The Washington Post compared Cruz to an evil, mass-murdering terrorist – “Ted Bin Laden”; a writer for The New Yorker compared Cruz to O.J. Simpson. The media have also made Cruz the face of a movement they have described as a bunch of racists “wearing suicide vests” and “taking hostages.”
Mind you, this is just what the elite media have been saying. President Obama and top Democrats have been just as bad.
After all of this, the only surprise is that this is the only death threat against Cruz, or at least the only one we know of. Why would someone not feel a seething hostility towards an individual the national media and our president are wishing dead, comparing to terrorists, and relentlessly demonizing as the leader of a radical, dangerous, arsonist, anarchist, racist, hostage-taking cause that will destroy America?
We sure have come a long way from a media and White House that just two years ago made a national crusade out of finding a New Tone in politics. In the wake of the horrific shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, within an hour, the media blamed Governor Sarah Palin over a standard issue campaign map that placed crosshairs over Giffords’ district. Even after it was clear there was no connection to the map and the deranged killer, the media and President Obama still lectured America over the corrosive effect violent political rhetoric was having on our culture.
But just two years later, the media are no longer interested in enforcing the New Tone. And just a year after trying to destroy Rush Limbaugh over his labeling of a left-wing activist as a “slut,” the media are currently engaged in a hate speech campaign beyond anything we have seen in years.
Politics aside, although the media will never publicly acknowledge the possibility that their “othering campaign” might have contributed to a death threat against a U.S. Senator serious enough to involve police, let’s hope that privately there is at least some soul searching going on.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC