Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.
Ashley Parker, Hannah Allam and Marianna Sotomayor at WP:
In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.
Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, it will be hard not to hit Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.
And this year, Pelosi — whom Republicans have long demonized as the face of progressive policies and who was a target of rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads, with Republicans spending nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi in the final stretch of the campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending.
Other public figures, across the spectrum, have faced threats and violence.
But the threats against Pelosi have often been particularly ferocious and date back more than a decade, when Republicans worked to make her one of the faces of former president Barack Obama’s health-care law.
More recently, CNN reported that in 2018 and 2019, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who was elected to Congress in 2020 and quickly became known for her conspiracy theory-laden views — repeatedly expressed support for executing prominent Democratic politicians, including Pelosi.
Greene liked a Facebook comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” as a way of removing Pelosi as speaker, CNN found. And in a video of a speech Greene gave promoting a 2019 petition she’d launched to impeach Pelosi for “crimes of treason,” Greene calls Pelosi “a traitor to our country” and says the speaker could be executed for treason.
“It’s a crime punishable by death — is what treason is,” Greene says in the video, according to CNN. “Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.”
;Marjorie Greene’s deleted FB video where she suggests Pelosi be executed for treason is getting a new look after saying she filed a police report over a Jimmy Kimmel joke.
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) April 7, 2022
"It's a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Pelosi is guilty of treason.”pic.twitter.com/cUVT4AUPBw
Even though the speaker has angered the Beijing regime by supporting Taiwan...
Pelosi ❤️ Communist China.
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 3, 2022
