Do you remember when Sarah Palin's SarahPAC published a map in March 2010 with crosshairs over the districts of 20 House Democrats? The left lost its mind. After a gunman shot then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in January 2011, Democrats and their allies in the liberal media went after Palin all over again, accusing her of feeding a climate of political violence.
A map. A graphic.
That was enough to paint a Republican as inciting attempted murder.
Remember that, because the party that couldn't stomach a campaign map just watched its own House leader say something far worse.
When President Donald Trump named Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff to replace the outgoing Susie Wiles on Friday, Democrats flipped out, and one of them took things way too far. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who's expected to become speaker in the new Congress, answered with a vicious attack that reads like a threat.
Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands. His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) November 6, 2026
Eradicated. Like a malignant tumor.
The man likely to hold the speaker's gavel compared Miller to a cancer that needs to be wiped out. In today's climate, that language can easily stir up an unstable person, and Miller has already faced threats fueled by Democrat rhetoric.
Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called Jeffries' words "shocking" coming from someone who may soon be speaker. She's right. Democrats should condemn him, but nobody expects them to.
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We've already seen what this kind of rhetoric produces. Trump has survived multiple assassination attempts. Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year. Mere days after the midterms, authorities arrested near the White House a Venezuelan national who allegedly told Secret Service officers that voices in his head ordered him to travel to Washington and kill the president.
I'm pretty sure those voices came from Democrats.
Officers reportedly found three firearms and ammunition in his vehicle. The party has normalized this kind of talk, and left-on-right violence has gotten worse right alongside it.
Obviously, Democrats have every right to fight Trump's immigration policies, or any policy they disagree with. But calling an opponent a tumor with blood on his hands has nothing to do with any of that. Jeffries launched a personal attack in language that suggests something far darker than a policy dispute.
In the United States, prosecutors can charge you with making a death threat, and you can face charges for soliciting or encouraging someone else to commit murder, depending on what you say and the circumstances.
The Supreme Court has weighed in on this, and it doesn’t look good for Jeffries.
In Counterman v. Colorado back in 2023, the court held that prosecutors must show that the speaker at least consciously disregarded a substantial risk that others would read his words as a threat of violence. They don't have to prove he intended to carry it out.
Jeffries can't fully control how people interpret, repeat, or act on what he says. Nobody can. But a man who has seen assassins target Trump and kill Kirk knows exactly what risk he takes when he tells the country Miller should be eradicated.
Democrats used to preach that words have consequences, as long as a Republican was the one talking. Well, it would be nice if Democrats faced consequences, too. Will Jeffries face consequences for what he said? I doubt it. But in a just world, he would.