https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25...inton-obama-biden-de-niro-democrat-conspiracy
Mail bombing is a generational form of American terrorism
22 comments
Anyone who mails their political opinion in the form of a bomb must feel deeply that something has been lost
By Bijan Stephen Oct 25, 2018, 11:07am EDT
Share
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/61905173/1052953028.jpg.0.jpg)
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
This week, someone in America has taken it upon themselves to mail bombs to George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the Democratic Rep. (and former chair of the Democratic National Committee) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, and former CIA director John Brennan. Brennan’s bomb arrived at CNN’s New York City office, leading to the prompt evacuation of the building. Robert De Niro, a prominent critic of the current president, also received a package with an explosive device inside. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that the US Postal Service records images of mail that comes into its system, and a search of those images led to the discovery of more suspicious packages. How many more was not immediately clear.
There’s a thread connecting all of them, of course: each person on the list is a prominent member of the Democratic Party, and each — aside from De Niro — has been the subject of at least one conspiracy theory related to the 2016 American presidential election. Many of those theories were broadcast on Fox News, after having first spread through the swamps of talk radio and the conservative blogosphere. Today, they are more amplified than ever, with new conspiracies appearing as quickly as the old ones can be debunked.
“Why are our children doing this to us?”
While mail bombs are outside the bounds of normal political discourse by any conceivable measure, they are by no means unfamiliar in American political culture. Mail bombing is perhaps the most American form of political terrorism for a particular generation. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, planting bombs was a way for fringe elements to draw attention to the political issues of the day, whether those concerns were about the government, the environment, technology, or the Vietnam War. (Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, carried that tradition through the 1980s.)
In one study of New York City that looked at the period spanning January 1969 to October 1970, the authors found there were “about 370 bombings — most of them minor,” which averages to more than one bombing every two days. It was a common thing. In a blog post from 2009, The New York Times looked back on the political tumult of 1969: one of the historians they spoke to, Jeremy Varon, said young people believed “they could bomb old ideologies out of existence.” Another historian the Times quoted, Beverly Gage, said adults were focused on the youth, asking, “Why are our children doing this to us?”
What’s unbearable to today’s domestic terrorist is the feeling that he’s losing his country
In 1997, Philip Roth asked essentially the same question in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the suburbs, American Pastoral, which told the story of a seemingly perfect family rocked by the actions of their rebellious, anti-war teenager, who kills three people with her bombs. As Roth writes, for the protagonist’s teenage daughter, “being an American was loathing America,” but for her father, “loving America was something he could not let go of any more than he could have let go of loving his father and his mother, any more than he could have let go of his decency.” What’s unbearable to Roth’s protagonist is giving up the fiction of America; what’s unbearable to today’s domestic terrorist is the feeling that he’s losing his country to a shadowy, well-financed cabal acting explicitly on behalf of people who aren’t like him.
The 16-year-old from American Pastoral would be 66 today. She’d be part of the generation that grew up in the long shadow of the Vietnam War. If she’d left Newark, she might have established her career during the riotously rich ’80s and solidified both income and savings in the ’90s before rounding the curve, with children, into the 2000s. If she was one of the lucky ones, she might have survived 2008 with her savings intact. If not, she could have seen the things she worked so hard for evaporate into the mists of some bank’s fucked-up balance sheet, never to be seen or heard from again. She might see her children struggling with massive amounts of student loan debt that she’d know they’ll have no chance of paying off in their lifetime, and she might wonder, for a second, what went wrong.
The bombs of the ’60s and ’70s were mostly planted for political reasons. People opposed the Vietnam War or the president or the way American companies treated the environment, and not all were aimed at people. Many of The Weathermen’s bombs, for example, targeted buildings and politically significant places, like police departments. This week’s actions were explicitly aimed at people the president and his allies treat as enemies, and it was meant to make anyone who would support those people afraid.
The president admitted as much in a characteristically elliptical tweet, which blamed media coverage of his administration for causing the anger that might lead a person to mail a bomb. “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he wrote. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” By shifting the blame onto the media, one of Trump’s favorite punching bags, the president has implicitly legitimized this domestic terrorist’s actions as a valid expression of anger.
Mail bombs are an anachronism. It’s as though the person who sent them came of age before mass shooters or swattings but after World War II. The act of mailing bombs — as opposed to, say, holding a group of people hostage or shooting up a university — is easiest to parse as something generational. If millennials’ preferred form of domestic terrorism is the mass shooting — which one might link to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, which would have happened around the same impressionistic age for many millennials as The Weathermen’s bombings were for Baby Boomers — then it makes sense that the Baby Boomers’ preferred form of domestic terrorism is a detonation. (Although it’s certainly possible that this domestic terrorist is a millennial or Gen Xer who decided to use the postal service.)
Any person who goes to the trouble of mailing their political opinion in the form of a bomb must deeply feel that something has been lost
Anyone who goes to the trouble of mailing their political opinion in the form of a bomb to a former president must feel deeply that something has been lost or taken from them. And it’s no coincidence that the bombs’ targets have, over the last half decade, become right-wing bogeymen whose names stand in for entire concepts and imagined wrongs. Right-wing cable news shows still regularly feature them as the cause of every problem in America.
Pizzagate happened the same way. A segment of the right-wing media linked Hillary Clinton to pedophilia and child trafficking in a Washington, DC pizza place, which eventually led a man to shoot up that pizza place, looking to rescue those same imagined children. These theories aren’t benign, and they don’t spring up in isolation. This week’s bomber probably frequented some of those same places, among more fringe outlets. As The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted, the bomb sent to Brennan by way of CNN bore a picture of an ISIS parody flag, which is a meme that circulates in right-wing spaces online.
Even so, a number of media personalities on the right have already begun to suggest that the bombs, which were real, are actually a liberal hoax. What does it mean that these people, who have millions of followers between them, refuse to accept reality, either for personal or political gain?
Yesterday in The New York Times, Alexander Soros, George Soros’ son, wrote about the hate his father receives. “My father acknowledges that his philanthropic work, while nonpartisan, is ‘political’ in a broad sense: It seeks to support those who promote societies where everyone has a voice,” the younger Soros wrote. “But something changed in 2016. Before that, the vitriol he faced was largely confined to the extremist fringes, among white supremacists and nationalists who sought to undermine the very foundations of democracy.” The edges become the center, and the president sits astride its heart.
Correction: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. A previous version of this story stated that she was the former chair of the Democratic National Convention.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45975447
Mail bombs: Robert De Niro and Joe Biden latest targets
Related Topics
Media captionA specialist "total containment vehicle" removes a suspect package sent to Robert De Niro
A suspect package similar to those sent to senior public figures has been sent to a New York restaurant owned by the actor Robert De Niro, the FBI has said.
The device was found at the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan early on Thursday local time, said the city's mayor.
Former Vice-President Joe Biden has also received two suspect packages.
The latest incident marks the eighth critic of President Donald Trump to receive such a package this week.
Skip Twitter post by @FBI
Report
End of Twitter post by @FBI
De Niro - the star of films Raging Bull and Meet the Parents - is a vocal Trump opponent.
In the past he has called him "a national disaster", "a mutt who doesn't know what he's talking about" and said that he wanted to "punch him in the face".
When the Oscar-winner attacked him at the Tony Awards in June, the president responded by calling De Niro a "very low IQ individual".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Academy Award-winning actor has been a vocal critic of President Trump
The New York Police Department said the restaurant building - which also houses his production company TriBeCa Films - was empty at the time the suspicious device arrived, NBC reports.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the "really quick-witted work of a security guard" who alerted authorities.
According to the Associated Press, the security guard was off work on Thursday and had seen an image in a news report of the packages others had received.
That individual then recalled spotting something similar in the building's mailroom and immediately called authorities who removed the device around 06:30 local time (11:30GMT), AP reports.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police outside the Tribeca Grill in New York City
"We have to be ready for any eventuality," Mr de Blasio said. "It might be hours, it might be days, it might be weeks."
Shortly after the news about De Niro's restaurant broke, President Trump appeared to pin the blame on the media, tweeting: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News."
He made no direct reference to the device found at the restaurant, or any of the earlier incidents.
Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
Report
End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
The series of bomb alerts began on Monday, when explosive devices were sent to locations in New York, the Washington DC area and Florida.
The first was found in the post box of billionaire businessman George Soros, a major Democratic Party donor.
Other devices were sent to the following individuals, according to the FBI:
CNN's New York office was evacuated on Wednesday morning, after the package addressed to Mr Brennan was found in its mailroom.
Two devices were sent to separate offices for Congresswoman Waters.
Two devices addressed to former Vice-president Joe Biden were discovered in his home state of Delaware on Thursday, investigators said.
None of the devices went off. The FBI has launched a manhunt for their sender.
Image copyright CBS Image caption The Time Warner building in New York City was evacuated on Wednesday morning Image copyright Reuters Image caption A post office in Delaware was searched after a suspicious package was found there
The attempted bombings come just under two weeks before the mid-term elections, with US politics highly polarised.
President Trump first responded on Wednesday by calling for more civility in public life, saying: "Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.
"No-one should carelessly compare political opponents to historic villains, which is done often."
Media captionDonald Trump: "Stop endless hostility"
The president made no specific reference to the intended recipients of the packages.
He later told the media to end the "constant negative and oftentimes false attacks".
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was targeted at the CNN office on Wednesday, tweeted to Mr Trump on Thursday: "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful."
Skip Twitter post by @JohnBrennan
Report
End of Twitter post by @JohnBrennan
Why is this so political?
The president's critics have called his remarks hypocritical, as he often uses vicious language against his opponents and the press.
Skip Twitter post 2 by @realDonaldTrump
Report
End of Twitter post 2 by @realDonaldTrump
Last week, he said Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder - who were all targeted with suspicious packages - "are losing it", and that "they've gone so far left that they can't even believe that they're over there".
During his campaign Mr Trump promised to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaults a protester and vowed to jail his opponent Hillary Clinton after the election.
CNN's President Jeff Zucker on Wednesday condemned the "total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks". He added that Mr Trump "should understand their words matter".
But conservatives say Democrats are to blame for the state of political discourse in the US.
They say Democrats, including those who were targeted in the bomb scare, have encouraged "angry mob" behaviour.
Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, who nearly died after he was shot in 2017 by a deranged supporter of progressive Senator Bernie Sanders during a morning softball practice, wrote in Fox News on Thursday of the "growing list of violent or threatening actions taken against conservatives by Democrats".
"The threats and the violence have not let up and instead of seeing my Democrat colleagues calling for an end, there have been calls for their supporters to keep going, to do even more to threaten Republicans," he wrote.
Media captionPence: 'Those responsible will be brought to justice'
He cited multiple examples of Republicans being "chased out of restaurants" and of Republican lawmakers who have received death threats against themselves and their families.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders praised Mr Trump's reaction to the bomb scares on Fox News, saying: "The President, I think could not have been more presidential."
She added that "certainly the media has a role to play in this process" adding that "90% of the coverage of this president is negative despite the historic successes".
"That is not helpful to the American discourse," she added.
Some of Mr Trump's supporters have said they believe the packages are part of a Democratic plot to win votes in the mid-terms, but there is no evidence for this.
Image caption A Republican outside the Florida governor debates on Wednesday holds a sign accusing Democrats of "fake bombs"
An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force "will continue to work to identify and arrest whosoever is responsible for sending these packages," the agency's director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
Media caption"Treasonous, traitor, corrupt" - but is that a Trump supporter or an Obama supporter talking about their opposition?
Related Topics
https://www.fastcompany.com/9025628...now-so-far-after-soros-clinton-obama-targeted
[Photo: Trinity Treft/Unsplash]
By Steven Melendez1 minute Read
Here’s what we know so far about a wave of suspicious packages reported this week:
You Might Also Like:
Mail bombing is a generational form of American terrorism
22 comments
Anyone who mails their political opinion in the form of a bomb must feel deeply that something has been lost
By Bijan Stephen Oct 25, 2018, 11:07am EDT
Share
This week, someone in America has taken it upon themselves to mail bombs to George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the Democratic Rep. (and former chair of the Democratic National Committee) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, and former CIA director John Brennan. Brennan’s bomb arrived at CNN’s New York City office, leading to the prompt evacuation of the building. Robert De Niro, a prominent critic of the current president, also received a package with an explosive device inside. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that the US Postal Service records images of mail that comes into its system, and a search of those images led to the discovery of more suspicious packages. How many more was not immediately clear.
There’s a thread connecting all of them, of course: each person on the list is a prominent member of the Democratic Party, and each — aside from De Niro — has been the subject of at least one conspiracy theory related to the 2016 American presidential election. Many of those theories were broadcast on Fox News, after having first spread through the swamps of talk radio and the conservative blogosphere. Today, they are more amplified than ever, with new conspiracies appearing as quickly as the old ones can be debunked.
“Why are our children doing this to us?”
While mail bombs are outside the bounds of normal political discourse by any conceivable measure, they are by no means unfamiliar in American political culture. Mail bombing is perhaps the most American form of political terrorism for a particular generation. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, planting bombs was a way for fringe elements to draw attention to the political issues of the day, whether those concerns were about the government, the environment, technology, or the Vietnam War. (Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, carried that tradition through the 1980s.)
In one study of New York City that looked at the period spanning January 1969 to October 1970, the authors found there were “about 370 bombings — most of them minor,” which averages to more than one bombing every two days. It was a common thing. In a blog post from 2009, The New York Times looked back on the political tumult of 1969: one of the historians they spoke to, Jeremy Varon, said young people believed “they could bomb old ideologies out of existence.” Another historian the Times quoted, Beverly Gage, said adults were focused on the youth, asking, “Why are our children doing this to us?”
What’s unbearable to today’s domestic terrorist is the feeling that he’s losing his country
In 1997, Philip Roth asked essentially the same question in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the suburbs, American Pastoral, which told the story of a seemingly perfect family rocked by the actions of their rebellious, anti-war teenager, who kills three people with her bombs. As Roth writes, for the protagonist’s teenage daughter, “being an American was loathing America,” but for her father, “loving America was something he could not let go of any more than he could have let go of loving his father and his mother, any more than he could have let go of his decency.” What’s unbearable to Roth’s protagonist is giving up the fiction of America; what’s unbearable to today’s domestic terrorist is the feeling that he’s losing his country to a shadowy, well-financed cabal acting explicitly on behalf of people who aren’t like him.
The 16-year-old from American Pastoral would be 66 today. She’d be part of the generation that grew up in the long shadow of the Vietnam War. If she’d left Newark, she might have established her career during the riotously rich ’80s and solidified both income and savings in the ’90s before rounding the curve, with children, into the 2000s. If she was one of the lucky ones, she might have survived 2008 with her savings intact. If not, she could have seen the things she worked so hard for evaporate into the mists of some bank’s fucked-up balance sheet, never to be seen or heard from again. She might see her children struggling with massive amounts of student loan debt that she’d know they’ll have no chance of paying off in their lifetime, and she might wonder, for a second, what went wrong.
The bombs of the ’60s and ’70s were mostly planted for political reasons. People opposed the Vietnam War or the president or the way American companies treated the environment, and not all were aimed at people. Many of The Weathermen’s bombs, for example, targeted buildings and politically significant places, like police departments. This week’s actions were explicitly aimed at people the president and his allies treat as enemies, and it was meant to make anyone who would support those people afraid.
The president admitted as much in a characteristically elliptical tweet, which blamed media coverage of his administration for causing the anger that might lead a person to mail a bomb. “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he wrote. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” By shifting the blame onto the media, one of Trump’s favorite punching bags, the president has implicitly legitimized this domestic terrorist’s actions as a valid expression of anger.
Mail bombs are an anachronism. It’s as though the person who sent them came of age before mass shooters or swattings but after World War II. The act of mailing bombs — as opposed to, say, holding a group of people hostage or shooting up a university — is easiest to parse as something generational. If millennials’ preferred form of domestic terrorism is the mass shooting — which one might link to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, which would have happened around the same impressionistic age for many millennials as The Weathermen’s bombings were for Baby Boomers — then it makes sense that the Baby Boomers’ preferred form of domestic terrorism is a detonation. (Although it’s certainly possible that this domestic terrorist is a millennial or Gen Xer who decided to use the postal service.)
Any person who goes to the trouble of mailing their political opinion in the form of a bomb must deeply feel that something has been lost
Anyone who goes to the trouble of mailing their political opinion in the form of a bomb to a former president must feel deeply that something has been lost or taken from them. And it’s no coincidence that the bombs’ targets have, over the last half decade, become right-wing bogeymen whose names stand in for entire concepts and imagined wrongs. Right-wing cable news shows still regularly feature them as the cause of every problem in America.
Pizzagate happened the same way. A segment of the right-wing media linked Hillary Clinton to pedophilia and child trafficking in a Washington, DC pizza place, which eventually led a man to shoot up that pizza place, looking to rescue those same imagined children. These theories aren’t benign, and they don’t spring up in isolation. This week’s bomber probably frequented some of those same places, among more fringe outlets. As The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted, the bomb sent to Brennan by way of CNN bore a picture of an ISIS parody flag, which is a meme that circulates in right-wing spaces online.
Even so, a number of media personalities on the right have already begun to suggest that the bombs, which were real, are actually a liberal hoax. What does it mean that these people, who have millions of followers between them, refuse to accept reality, either for personal or political gain?
Yesterday in The New York Times, Alexander Soros, George Soros’ son, wrote about the hate his father receives. “My father acknowledges that his philanthropic work, while nonpartisan, is ‘political’ in a broad sense: It seeks to support those who promote societies where everyone has a voice,” the younger Soros wrote. “But something changed in 2016. Before that, the vitriol he faced was largely confined to the extremist fringes, among white supremacists and nationalists who sought to undermine the very foundations of democracy.” The edges become the center, and the president sits astride its heart.
Correction: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. A previous version of this story stated that she was the former chair of the Democratic National Convention.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45975447
Mail bombs: Robert De Niro and Joe Biden latest targets
- 25 October 2018
- Share this with Facebook
- Share this with Messenger
- Share this with Twitter
- Share this with Email
Related Topics
Media captionA specialist "total containment vehicle" removes a suspect package sent to Robert De Niro
A suspect package similar to those sent to senior public figures has been sent to a New York restaurant owned by the actor Robert De Niro, the FBI has said.
The device was found at the Tribeca Grill in Manhattan early on Thursday local time, said the city's mayor.
Former Vice-President Joe Biden has also received two suspect packages.
The latest incident marks the eighth critic of President Donald Trump to receive such a package this week.
Skip Twitter post by @FBI
Report
End of Twitter post by @FBI
De Niro - the star of films Raging Bull and Meet the Parents - is a vocal Trump opponent.
In the past he has called him "a national disaster", "a mutt who doesn't know what he's talking about" and said that he wanted to "punch him in the face".
When the Oscar-winner attacked him at the Tony Awards in June, the president responded by calling De Niro a "very low IQ individual".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Academy Award-winning actor has been a vocal critic of President Trump
The New York Police Department said the restaurant building - which also houses his production company TriBeCa Films - was empty at the time the suspicious device arrived, NBC reports.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the "really quick-witted work of a security guard" who alerted authorities.
According to the Associated Press, the security guard was off work on Thursday and had seen an image in a news report of the packages others had received.
That individual then recalled spotting something similar in the building's mailroom and immediately called authorities who removed the device around 06:30 local time (11:30GMT), AP reports.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police outside the Tribeca Grill in New York City
"We have to be ready for any eventuality," Mr de Blasio said. "It might be hours, it might be days, it might be weeks."
Shortly after the news about De Niro's restaurant broke, President Trump appeared to pin the blame on the media, tweeting: "A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News."
He made no direct reference to the device found at the restaurant, or any of the earlier incidents.
Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
Report
End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump
The series of bomb alerts began on Monday, when explosive devices were sent to locations in New York, the Washington DC area and Florida.
The first was found in the post box of billionaire businessman George Soros, a major Democratic Party donor.
Other devices were sent to the following individuals, according to the FBI:
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Former President Barack Obama
- Former Vice-President Joe Biden
- Former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN
- Former Attorney General Eric Holder
- California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters
CNN's New York office was evacuated on Wednesday morning, after the package addressed to Mr Brennan was found in its mailroom.
Two devices were sent to separate offices for Congresswoman Waters.
Two devices addressed to former Vice-president Joe Biden were discovered in his home state of Delaware on Thursday, investigators said.
None of the devices went off. The FBI has launched a manhunt for their sender.
Image copyright CBS Image caption The Time Warner building in New York City was evacuated on Wednesday morning Image copyright Reuters Image caption A post office in Delaware was searched after a suspicious package was found there
The attempted bombings come just under two weeks before the mid-term elections, with US politics highly polarised.
President Trump first responded on Wednesday by calling for more civility in public life, saying: "Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.
"No-one should carelessly compare political opponents to historic villains, which is done often."
Media captionDonald Trump: "Stop endless hostility"
The president made no specific reference to the intended recipients of the packages.
He later told the media to end the "constant negative and oftentimes false attacks".
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was targeted at the CNN office on Wednesday, tweeted to Mr Trump on Thursday: "Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful."
Skip Twitter post by @JohnBrennan
Report
End of Twitter post by @JohnBrennan
Why is this so political?
The president's critics have called his remarks hypocritical, as he often uses vicious language against his opponents and the press.
Skip Twitter post 2 by @realDonaldTrump
Report
End of Twitter post 2 by @realDonaldTrump
Last week, he said Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder - who were all targeted with suspicious packages - "are losing it", and that "they've gone so far left that they can't even believe that they're over there".
During his campaign Mr Trump promised to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaults a protester and vowed to jail his opponent Hillary Clinton after the election.
CNN's President Jeff Zucker on Wednesday condemned the "total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks". He added that Mr Trump "should understand their words matter".
But conservatives say Democrats are to blame for the state of political discourse in the US.
They say Democrats, including those who were targeted in the bomb scare, have encouraged "angry mob" behaviour.
Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, who nearly died after he was shot in 2017 by a deranged supporter of progressive Senator Bernie Sanders during a morning softball practice, wrote in Fox News on Thursday of the "growing list of violent or threatening actions taken against conservatives by Democrats".
"The threats and the violence have not let up and instead of seeing my Democrat colleagues calling for an end, there have been calls for their supporters to keep going, to do even more to threaten Republicans," he wrote.
Media captionPence: 'Those responsible will be brought to justice'
He cited multiple examples of Republicans being "chased out of restaurants" and of Republican lawmakers who have received death threats against themselves and their families.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders praised Mr Trump's reaction to the bomb scares on Fox News, saying: "The President, I think could not have been more presidential."
She added that "certainly the media has a role to play in this process" adding that "90% of the coverage of this president is negative despite the historic successes".
"That is not helpful to the American discourse," she added.
Some of Mr Trump's supporters have said they believe the packages are part of a Democratic plot to win votes in the mid-terms, but there is no evidence for this.
Image caption A Republican outside the Florida governor debates on Wednesday holds a sign accusing Democrats of "fake bombs"
An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force "will continue to work to identify and arrest whosoever is responsible for sending these packages," the agency's director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
Media caption"Treasonous, traitor, corrupt" - but is that a Trump supporter or an Obama supporter talking about their opposition?
Related Topics
https://www.fastcompany.com/9025628...now-so-far-after-soros-clinton-obama-targeted
- 10.24.18
[Photo: Trinity Treft/Unsplash]
By Steven Melendez1 minute Read
Here’s what we know so far about a wave of suspicious packages reported this week:
- A pipe bomb was found in billionaire financier George Soros‘s home mailbox by a caretaker on Monday. The caretaker alerted law enforcement, who safely detonated the device.
- Additional explosives were intercepted en route to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Wednesday. They’re said to be similar to the bomb in Soros’s mailbox.
- Another suspicious package was found at CNN’s newsroom in Manhattan’s Time Warner Center Wednesday morning. The newsroom and other nearby businesses were evacuated, with New Yorkers getting alerts on their phones to shelter in place if on that block while the apparent bomb was transported to an NYPD site. The package was reportedly addressed to former CIA director John Brennan (now a contributor to CNN rival MSNBC).
- Reports of another bomb being sent to the White House were false, the Secret Service has said.
- Another suspicious package was reportedly found at the Sunrise, Florida, office of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. The office was evacuated. The package was apparently sent to former Attorney General Eric Holder with Wasserman Schultz’s address as return address, then returned there when it couldn’t be delivered to Holder at the address given. The package sent to CNN also had Wassserman Schultz’s return address.
- The offices of the San Diego Union-Tribune and other businesses were briefly evacuated after suspicious packages, described as Priority Mail boxes near a pump, were spotted outside the building. The building also includes a WeWork facility, the paper reports. The boxes were later found to be innocuous.
- A suspicious package was also sent to the Manhattan office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the governor said Wednesday. The item turned out to be a USB stick with information about the Proud Boys white nationalist group.
- Police intercepted a suspicious package mailed to Rep. Maxine Waters, ABC News White House Correspondent Tara Palmeri tweeted Wednesday.
- Another package was found en route to Robert De Niro, a vocal critic of President Trump.
- Two suspicious packages were also sent to former Vice President Joe Biden.
You Might Also Like:
