Paul pointed to a Sunday tweet in which the singer behind hits such as”Do not Mean Nothing” and”Endless Summer Nights” said he would purchase drinks to get Paul’s neighbor,who brokeseveral of their senator’s ribs in a 2017 attack. The intent, Paul argued, was to incite another violent assault against him.
“As a repeated target of violence, it is reprehensible that Twitter allows C-list stars to promote violence against me and my family,” Paul said in a statement shared with Politico, that broke the news of this suspicious package. “Only this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder stuffed letter”
Marx, who regularly tweets about politics to his more than 300,000 followers, cautioned that his tweet was only”a wise-crack about Rand Paul’s neighbor.”
“I’m the only man on Twitter who is ever referenced Rand Paul’s neighbor,” Marx sarcastically responded to one critic sharing Paul’s accusations on Twitter.
The incident has become the latest rallying cry for conservatives who claim that social networking platforms overtly target right-wing users. It’s as Paul has confronted blowback this week for saying he will refuse the coronavirus vaccine, citing that the antibodies he says he has from contracting covid-19 this past year.
On Monday, a package arrived at Paul’s house illustrated with a picture of the senator in a neck brace and using a cast on his arm, Fox News reported, over text scanning,”I’ll complete what your neighbor started.”
In 2017, Rene Boucher made a”running handle” on Paul, breaking six of Paul’s ribs. The two had had a long-running dispute over yard waste from the neighboring houses. Boucher later pleaded guilty to federal charges of attacking a member of Congress and has been sentenced to 30 days in prison.
In 2018, Paul was again the target of a violent threat. U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man whom Paul said had called one of his Kentucky offices and”threatened to kill me chop my family with an ax.”
The FBI’s Louisville office is currently working with the Warren County Sheriff’s Office to investigate the bundle at Paul’s house, the bureau told the Louisville Courier-Journal. In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Capitol Police said they are investigating too.
“We are hoping to release more information this afternoon, once we get with the researchers to determine what’s releasable,” a Capitol Police spokesperson said.
Marx, who rose to fame in the late’80s and then recorded several top 20 hits in the’90s, has grown his online profile throughout the pandemic with podcasts and also a successful, conservative-baiting Twitter feed that one newspaper critic known as “hilariously profane.”
On Sunday, after Paul brought headlines saying on a podcast that he planned to skip the vaccine, Marx lashed out in the Republican lawmaker.
“I’ll say it again,” Marx tweeted. “If I ever meet Rand Paul’s neighbor I will hug him and buy him many drinks as he can consume.”
As backlash grew early on Tuesday over Paul’s statement, Marx reacted by tweeting out a story on the senator contracting covid-19 annually and potentially exposing other lawmakers.
“You know who actually place multiple people’s lives at possible danger?” He wrote.
