Blaze Media A Republican congressman who switched parties in 2019 over former President Donald Trump released audio of a threatening voicemail left by a columnist who also penned lurid and vitriolic columns against him and his family.
Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey held a media briefing on Monday where he demanded that action be taken against the columnist who threatened him and his family.
“For far too long, calls for violence have gone unchallenged, but today, right here in Cape May County, we are drawing a line in the sand,” Van Drew said. “You can come after me with loud words and threats, but if anyone, let alone a member of the press, thinks they can threaten my wife and my family, they’ve got another thing coming.”
Van Drew posted the audio of the call from Ocean City Sentinel guest contributor John McCall to his YouTube account.
“Since your betrayal of our party and your treasonous loyalty to the worst degenerate who has ever occupied the presidency in United States history, I can only say that I would swear to your demise as a politician, and I believe that you personally are a degenerate,” McCall said on the recording.
“As a member of the New Jersey Press Association, I will do everything in my power to ensure that you are deposed if not dead,” he added. The press association has denied that he was ever a member.
“Anything I can do to basically get you out of office, I will do,” McCall added. “You are a traitor Jeff Van Drew, and you deserve the fate of all traitors.”
McCall had also written a disturbing column fantasizing about the wife of the congressman being sexually assaulted.
“Van Drew’s mentor has said it’s cool to greet women by grabbing them between the legs,” McCall wrote, referring to the notorious comments by Trump captured on a hot microphone in 2005.
“Should we test the acceptability of this remark and get the direct response of a prominent GOP female by greeting Van Drew’s wife with the Republican high-five, lifting her over the hood of her car and objectively recording her physical reaction to the tickle when she lands?” McCall continued.
He also called for Van Drew to be executed for treason.
“Accountability is all-important in politics,” he wrote in January. “Like all Trump loyalists, Van Drew and [Michael] DeVlieger are guilty of subverting the peaceful and equitable functioning of our government. This is not just a moral failing. This is treason. And the penalty for treason is execution. That applies to the great and the small, to presidents, congressmen and small-town councilmen. It’s the trickle down theory of responsibility.”
The editor and the publisher of the McCall opinion column said that the outlet should not have published the acerbic column and printed an apology.
