Sen. Elissa Slotkin said Capitol Police told her she would now have nonstop security after President Donald Trump publicly accused her of treason and amplified calls for violence.
The situation started on Tuesday when Slotkin and five other Democratic lawmakers who previously served in the military or in intelligence released a video urging people in those fields to stand firm if asked to do something unlawful. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders,” they said while reading from a joint statement. It was a clear reminder of basic duty under the law, but it lit a fuse online.
By Thursday morning, Trump was raging on Truth Social. “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,” he wrote. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET. President DJT.” He kept posting, calling their message “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” and then wrote simply, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Trump also reposted messages from supporters calling for the Democrats to be indicted or even executed. One repost read, “Indict all of them,” while another went further and declared, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”
Later that day, Slotkin joined Chris Hayes on All In on MSNBC. Hayes asked her if Trump’s outburst had changed her security needs. She said the shift was immediate.
“Yeah, I mean, look, over the years, I’ve had threats here and there. It was instantaneous,” she said. “I mean, hundreds, if not at this point, thousands of calls, emails, texts, obviously online postings.”
She said Capitol Police stepped in right away. “Capitol Police came to us and said, ‘We’re gonna put you on 24/7 security.’ We’ve got law enforcement out in front of my house. I mean, it changes things immediately.” Slotkin added that rhetoric from the top has real consequences. “Leadership climate is set from the top. And if the president is saying you should be hanged, then we shouldn’t be surprised when folks on the ground are going to follow suit and say even worse.”
Slotkin also suggested that Trump was lashing out to distract from other news. She said he “is trying to use fear as a weapon” to divert attention from things like “the Epstein files or whatever else.”
The other lawmakers who appeared in the video with her were Sen. Mark Kelly, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Chris Deluzio, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan. All of them have military or intelligence backgrounds, and all have faced a wave of attacks online since the video was posted.
For Slotkin, the fallout is now literally on her doorstep, with security stationed outside her home and an avalanche of threats still pouring in.