“Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!” President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday.
When asked by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd if he took the tweet from the president as a threat, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House intelligence committee chairman and lead impeachment manager said, “I think it is intended to be.”
EXCLUSIVE: @RepAdamSchiff: "Look at the president's tweets about me today saying I should pay a price.."@chucktodd: "Do you take that as a threat?"@RepAdamSchiff: "I think it is intended to be." pic.twitter.com/8KUqaoJcS3
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 26, 2020
But Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) disagreed, saying, “I don’t think it’s a death threat. I don’t think he’s encouraging a death threat” when asked about it by Jake Tapper on CNN. Tapper had just told Lankford that, according to his sources, “Schiff has been getting death threats.”
Lankford, who was all over the Sunday morning news shows defending the president amid impeachment, downplayed Trump’s language, saying it was no different than words used by Schiff himself and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when referring to politicians “paying the price at the ballot box.”
Tapper pointed out that Lankford was “offended” when Schiff, during the impeachment trial last week, brought up a CBS News report that said Republican senators were threatened that their heads would be put “on a pike” if they went against the president, but that he was fine with the president’s tweet. Lankford said at the time that Schiff’s remarks were “insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.”
Lankford was not alone in his outrage over Schiff quoting an actual news report. According to multiple reports, Republican senators in the chamber reacted with groans and gasps. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said through a spokesperson, “That’s when [Schiff] lost me.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was also reportedly extremely unnerved by Schiff’s remarks, released a statement saying that “no Republican senator has been threatened in any way by anyone in the administration.”
So far no sitting Republican politician has expressed any concern over Trump’s tweet. Their selective outrage would be comical if not for the actual danger the president’s language could and has incited.
