Local Libertarian Party Doubles Down After Violent Harris Threat

On Sunday, before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire celebrated the prospect of political violence against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero,” the party wrote on X, before receiving swift backlash and deleting the post. Later that day, the party published a follow-up, announcing that it “deleted a tweet because we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to” and claiming that libertarians are “the most oppressed minority.”

On Tuesday, the account released a lengthier additional follow-up, insisting that the original tweet did not call for Harris’s assassination but “merely acknowledg[ed] how some members would react to one.”

But the newest post somehow made things worse, referring to historical instances of violence that were supposedly “necessary to advance or protect freedom,” including the assassination of “past tyrants like Abraham Lincoln.” Further, it stated that “it’s good when authoritarians” (that is, “progressives, socialists, and democrats”) are made to “feel unsafe or uncomfortable,” which the account’s provocative posts “are frequently explicitly intended” to do.

On Sunday, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver condemned the post as “abhorrent.” The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire replied by calling him a homophobic slur.

On X, New York Times opinion writer and libertarian Jane Coaston criticized the provocative state party as repellent and noxious to its purported cause: “Like if the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire were a CIA plot to destroy the Libertarian Party writ large what would they be doing differently.”