A REPUBLICAN representative who switched from the Democratic Party and “received a death threat from a columnist” has said “this cannot be the new norm for America.” Rep Jeff Van Drew, of New Jersey, said on Sunday he’s reviewing legal action against John McCall, a guest columnist for the Ocean City Sentinel. Van Drew’s office […]
A REPUBLICAN representative who switched from the Democratic Party and “received a death threat from a columnist” has said “this cannot be the new norm for America.”
Rep Jeff Van Drew, of New Jersey, said on Sunday he’s reviewing legal action against John McCall, a guest columnist for the Ocean City Sentinel.
Van Drew’s office said last week that on February 28, the politician received a voicemail from McCall in which the columnist allegedly left a death threat after he voted to overturn Joe Biden’s election win.
In the call, McCall reportedly said: “I would swear to your demise as a politician and I believe that you personally are a degenerate.
“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.
“Anything I can do to basically get you out of office, I will do. You are a traitor Jeff Van Drew and you deserve the fate of all traitors.”
Ocean City Sentinel editor and publisher David Nahan apologized to Van Drew and said that McCall is a local resident who sometimes writes guest columns for the paper.
“Because you felt threatened and felt your wife was threatened, I am sorry,” Nahan wrote in a newspaper commentary published on March 17.
“I don’t have a problem with giving readers space to put their names to criticism of any elected official. However, in this instance, I have let the readers down.”
Nahan, who said he didn’t think McCall’s previous columns were threatening against Van Drew, added to Fox News: “If he was a paid employee, he would have been fired for making the call.”
“He will not be allowed to submit anything else to the newspaper for publication and I have changed our policy on letters to the editor and guest opinions so nothing like that appears again,” the publisher said.
McCall, according to NJ.com, said Van Drew is “a grandstanding jack*** who, like his mentor Donald Trump, is attempting to censor the free press for criticizing his radical, disingenuous behavior in strong language.”
On Sunday, Van Drew – who became a Republican in 2019 after opposing Trump’s first impeachment – said during an appearance on Fox News he “believes” he will press charges against McCall.
He said the supposed death threat “doesn’t worry me.”
“I’m standing for America,” Van Drew said. “I’m going to stand for what I believe and nobody’s going to make me afraid, nobody’s going to make me worry about it.”
According to the local Patch, beef between Van Drew and McCall apparently started in January, when McCall wrote a column about “Trump loyalists.”
“Like all Trump loyalists, Van Drew and 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 smalltown councilmen,” McCall wrote in the commentary, which was published on January 13 but has since been removed from the paper’s website.
“It’s the trickle down theory of responsibility.”
Van Drew said more recent column of McCall’s “vividly describes invading and destroying [Van Drew’s] home, and graphically ponders what it would be like to sexually assault his wife over the hood of her car.”
On Sunday, Van Drew, who recently won a second term, responded: “You can do anything that you want to me.”
“You can say what you want, you can disagree with me, you can threaten my life but I will not tolerate that for my family, my wife, my children, my grandchildren. And that’s where the line is drawn in the South Jersey sand.
“This cannot be the new norm for America, for America journalism,” he said. “It is just intolerable.”
McCall, for his part, told the Cape May County Herald that he and his wife received threatening phone calls repeatedly.
“I get five phone calls in a row from a guy,” McCall told the paper. “It appears to be some deranged Van Drew supporter. We ended up calling the police and getting them in here.
“He wouldn’t cooperate with the police at all. We had him on speakerphone.”
The Herald reports that Capitol Police are investigating the matter.
