An Arkansas man has been arrested and charged with 18 different counts of making threats aimed at CNN’s Don Lemon, Rep. Maxine Waters, Planned Parenthood, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Michael Avenatti and more. The Baxter County Sheriff’s office picked up 39-year-old Benjamin Craig Matthews of Mountain Home, Arkansas. His charges include five counts of “felony terroristic threats.”
More from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:
In one call, according to the affidavit, Matthews asked the CNN switchboard operator, "Could I be directed to DL's dead body hanging from a tree?"
Another time, Matthews asked if his call could be directed to "pipe bombs for DL."
In another call, Matthews spoke of "bloody pictures of DL cut up in small pieces, like the movie Saw," according to the affidavit from Sgt. Brad Hurst with the Baxter County sheriff's office.
Matthews is facing a slew of charges.
Matthews has been charged with five counts of felony terroristic threatening, four counts of misdemeanor terroristic threatening and nine counts of harassing communications, which is a misdemeanor.
It must be noted that Matthews targets are the very same media personalities and Democratic politicians who are frequently targeted by Donald Trump. Barely a week after a Trump fan sent more than a dozen pipe bombs to Trump critics, Donald Trump once again stood at the presidential podium and outrageously pointed his finger at CNN’s Jim Acosta and once again exclaimed that CNN was reporting “fake news” and Trump once again declared Jim Acosta an “enemy of the people.”
This is a crisis of our democracy, pure and simple. Our First Amendment right to a free press is absolutely being challenged like never before. People’s lives are on the line here. God forbid, but how long until one of these unstable Trump fans makes good on their threats to national media figures? Trump continues to fan the flames of racism and continues to rally his most unstable followers to harass media outlets he views as unfriendly because they stick to the facts and won’t bend to the story he wants to push.
Acosta has the following tweet pinned to the top of his page. Until Donald Trump and Fox News quit painting their fellow citizens and the media as their enemy, this country is never going to heal and will never be united. We find ourselves at an increasingly dangerous crossroads. Until Republicans move to reign in their own, there is no end in sight.