This past Friday on his social media platform, ex-president Donald Trump issued an explicit death threat targeting current Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In his online message, which quickly spread throughout the far-right media sphere, Trump wondered if McConnell was “approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him?”

“In any event,” Trump continued, “either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH.”

The all-caps “DEATH WISH” message was sent out to his roughly four million followers on the Truth Social media platform, Trump’s Twitter knock-off.

Trump’s threat came after McConnell voted along with Democratic senators in favor of a continuing resolution to fund the government, which passed in the Senate last week, and for indicating his support for a proposed bill to reform the Electoral Count Act.

Trump concluded his “DEATH WISH” post with a racist and xenophobic attack on Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife and Trump’s former transportation secretary. He urged McConnell to “immediately seek help and advise (sic) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” Chao had resigned her cabinet post the day after Trump’s January 6, 2021 fascist assault on the US Capitol.

In an interview published by the New York Times the day after Trump’s death threat, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, considered a “moderate” in the increasingly fascistic Republican Party, told the newspaper she recently had a rock thrown through a window in her home in Bangor, Maine.

Collins said the smashing of the window was particularly concerning because it was on a secluded side of the house, which, she suggested, showed that the area had been “studied and chosen.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed,” Collins told the Times. “What started with abusive phone calls is now translating into active threats of violence and real violence.”

In addition to Collins, the Times cited comments from Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal, who herself was targeted by a fascist gunman outside her home earlier this year.

Speaking of the lackadaisical attitude of the Capitol Police toward providing members of Congress with adequate security less than two years after Trump’s failed coup, Jayapal told the Times that it “took an enormous amount of pressure for me to feel like I was getting attention from Capitol Police.”

Following the attack on Congress, the Capitol Police recorded 9,625 threats against members of Congress in 2021, a “ten-fold increase” from 2016. In the first quarter of 2022, according to the Times, the Capitol Police had opened 1,820 cases of threats against Congress members.

Despite the thousands of threats over the past two years, less than 100 people have been arrested, the Times reported.

Trump’s post on Friday marks the second time in as many months he has incited racist violence against Chao in response to words or actions by her husband. In August, after McConnell suggested that the previously forecast Republican take-over of the Senate might not pan out due to “candidate quality” on the Republican side, Trump called him a “broken down hack.”

Trump demanded that the long-time Republican leader spend more money “helping them [Republican senatorial candidates] get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”

Chao was born on the island of Taiwan and emigrated to the US when she was eight years old.

As in August, McConnell has not issued a statement in response to Trump’s incitements. This continues a trend exhibited throughout Trump’s presidency and following the coup in which “mainstream” and “moderate” Republicans, especially those in leadership positions, remain silent in the face of Trump’s increasingly homicidal threats against his political enemies.

At his rally Saturday night at the Macomb Community College Expo Center, located in Warren, Michigan, Trump delivered another Hitler-inspired speech while stumping for his endorsed candidates. Two of them, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Mathew DePerno, and the candidate for secretary of state, Kristina Karamo, participated in Trump’s 2020 coup attempt.

Karamo is a Christian fascist who rocketed to stardom in the Republican Party in November 2020 when she claimed on Fox News and as a witness in Rudy Giuliani-led efforts to overturn the popular vote in Michigan that a combination of illegal ballots and Dominion Voting Systems software had flipped the state from Trump to Biden.

Muskegon County prosecutor DJ Hilson has yet to announce criminal charges against DePerno and eight other Republicans heavily involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the vote in Michigan. To avoid a conflict of interest, current Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel recommended a special prosecutor be appointed earlier this year to consider criminal charges against DePerno for, among other things, illegally accessing and tampering with voting machines.

DePerno led Trump’s efforts to exploit a quickly corrected human error in Antrim County, Michigan to justify declaring martial law and re-running the election at gunpoint.

In addition to DePerno and Karamo, QAnon fascist and Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at Saturday’s rally. Greene has published calls for the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and been cited by the House of Representatives for stalking and threatening Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has become a fixture at Trump “Save America” rallies around the country.

At the Michigan rally, she claimed that “communist” Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the “politically weaponized Department of Justice... set up a fake kidnapping plot” which was a “trial run” for “January 6,” which she said was used to “entrap MAGA.”

This was a reference to the plot by pro-Trump fascists to kidnap and kill Whitmer and storm the state Capitol in Lansing, which was broken up and exposed by federal and state authorities in October of 2020. The plot was indeed a “trial run” for the plot that was being hatched by Trump and his co-conspirators, including leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, to storm the US Capitol and kidnap or kill officials in order to overturn the election in the event of a defeat for Trump.

The far-right crowd, noticeably smaller than at previous “Save America” rallies, repeatedly chanted “lock her up!” in response to attacks on Whitmer and Hillary Clinton, which were leveled by virtually all the speakers.

In his speech, Trump reiterated his call to institute the death penalty for “drug dealers” and “human traffickers.” Making clear his policy of refusing to accept any election that goes against him and his Republican acolytes, he said, “I don't believe we'll ever have a fair election again.”

Trump cited Marjorie Taylor Greene as a witness as to the “horrible” conditions under which the January 6 “political prisoners” are being held.

He defended another one of his co-conspirators, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who, like Trump, Greene and the rest of the high-level Republicans who orchestrated the coup, remain free and uncharged more than 20 months after the fact. Thomas played a significant role in seeking to get Republican-led legislatures in key states that voted for Biden to overturn the popular vote and install fake slates of pro-Trump electors. Her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sought to back a coup with rubber stamp rulings in the nation’s highest court.