As the head of Cowboys for Trump, Couy Griffin has led pro-Trump horse rides through Washington, D.C., and posed for a photo in the White House with Donald Trump.
He’s a superfan of the president and on May 17, he made the case that Democrats should die.
“I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to a conclusion where the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” Griffin said to cheers at a rally at a New Mexico church.
He was there to defy a public safety order pertaining to the coronavirus.
The week-old video clip of Griffin had already been panned by the New Mexico Republican Party that said in a May 20 tweet, ‘any statements, whether in jest or serious about harming another individual are just plain wrong.’
Just about everyone, Republican or Democrat alike, agreed it was in bad taste.
But this morning, perhaps not surprisingly, Trump tweeted out the clip anyway, adding ‘Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico!’
Envisioning a scenario in which one’s political opponents are hurt or dead is about as dark a turn as there can be for political discourse.
Griffin has a history of calling for violence and the execution of Democrats.
According to KRWG, he has repeatedly said Democrats should be hanged for “treason” and has said laws requiring masks could result in “civil war.”
Griffin was photographed meeting Trump in the Oval Office in February, reportedly after he and a group of supporters rode horseback from Cumberland, Maryland, to Washington, DC, in support of Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall along the US–Mexico border.
On Sunday, anti-lockdown protesters in Frankfort, Kentucky, hanged an effigy of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear from a tree outside the state capitol.
The effigy bore Beshear’s face and a message: “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” The slogan, which means “thus always to tyrants,” is associated with the assassination of Julius Caesar and has become popular with anti-government groups.
It is also what John Wilkes Booth shouted from the stage of Ford’s Theater after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
In North Carolina, prominent anti-lockdown activist Adam Smith posted a Facebook Live video last week saying he and other activists were “willing to kill people” over coronavirus restrictions.
“But are we willing to kill people? Are we willing to lay down our lives?” Smith said in the video. “We have to say, ‘Yes.’ We have to say, ‘Yes.’ Is that violence? Is that terrorism? No, it’s not terrorism. I’m not trying to strike fear in people by saying, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I’m gonna say, ‘If you bring guns, I’m gonna bring guns. If you’re armed with this, we’re going to be armed with this.’”