As the political race heats up and Donald Trump continues to both inspire and enrage people, the line between the personal and the political has blurred. Multiple instances of violence towards peaceful anti-Trump protests at his rallies have been documented, and his personal insults to people who criticize him have always been colorful. For Katie Packer, GOP strategist and former deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney during his presidential run, going up against Trump has been no joke. Packer serves as the head of anti-Trump super PAC Our Principles, and according to Cosmopolitan, she receives daily death threats from Trump supporters.
Packer told USA Today’s Capital Download that she has gotten messages, over social media and by email that contain “the most hateful vitriol that I’ve ever encountered in 25 years in politics.” While Packer used to report them to Twitter, she admits, “I haven’t really dealt with it. My feeling is that their bark is worse than their bite, and they’re trying to get a rise out of me, and I’ve just decided to ignore it because I just don’t want to react and I don’t want to give them the pleasure of thinking that they’ve gotten to me somehow.”
Packer believes that Trump’s rhetoric caters to a specific group of people—a group that’s full of hatred and fear, but haven’t felt comfortable expressing that until now. “I don’t suggest that’s all of Donald Trump supporters,” she continued. “But he does seem to have brought out a group of people that used to feel like they needed to sort of keep quiet because what they say isn’t acceptable in polite society, and Donald Trump seems to have given them permission to just speak their mind.”