Pleasanton, California – It was a child’s drawing – something like a sweet, simple sketch hanging in the fridge, but something off about family portraits.
The ratio of Heights to Adults and Sprays was not lined up, so Eric Swalwell asked her daughter, “Who is all these people?”
“It’s Mr. Darley,” the kindergartener replied, naming the security escort who was present, searching for Democrats, his wife and three small children for almost lifetimes. The bodyguard has grown up very familiar to her, at 6 years old.
Sadly, horrifyingly, it is where we are nation under Donald Trump’s vengeful presidency and his malicious henchman, Elon Musk’s arrogant fist.
It not only distorted the perspective of the child in the middle of Swalwell, but also involved some of his fellow lawmakers (those who were probably chosen to advise, agree and exercise their best judgment) in silence and submission. Swalwell has personally heard it from some of his Republican colleagues in Capitol Hill.
He once thought their biggest fear was a tough major challenge and the possibility of losing re-election – heaven in favor of it. But no, he said, it’s deeper and more primitive. They fear personal retaliation and the possibility of violence.
“Their spouse says, ‘Don’t do this, don’t be the tallest poppy on the field.” Because if you do this to your family, everything becomes even more uncomfortable. I’ll go to church and go to the country club. “They don’t care about losing their jobs. They don’t want bulls’ eyes from their families.”
The 44-year-old former criminal prosecutor has represented moderately wealthy slices (Fremont, Livermore, Pleasanton) in the East Bay suburbs over the past decades. He launched an emerging bid for the President in 2019. This challenged early discussions when Swalwell challenged Joe Biden in 1988, recalling the president’s first run when he was a child himself.
Biden, in his 40s, awkwardly suggested when Swalwell said it was time for him to “pass the torch to a new generation of Americans.”
“He’s still right today,” Swalwell said.
“I’m still holding that torch,” Biden replied. The rest knows what happened.
Don’t be too surprised if Swalwell attempted another attempt at the White House in 2028.
Meanwhile, he is bringing up absent Democrats ahead of next year’s midterm elections to continue his pushback against Trump and Musk.
A centralist compared to many of California’s Congressional delegations, Swalwell won the lasting hostility of the president and his followers during the first Trump administration, when lawmakers were constant presence and relentless critics on social media and cable television circuits. He spitted the House of Representatives into the session on January 6, 2021, and explained that he would serve as one of nine bluff each managers holding Trump, inciting mobs that would overturn the leaders of the day.
With Swalwell’s account, he has spent more than $1 million on personal security over the past few years. It also includes other additional costs, enhanced security systems at his home, the necessary use of metal detectors at city hall meetings, and while appearing in the districts of other councillors.
He was subjected to countless death threats to himself and his family. He is physically accused. Suspicious packages arrive at his home almost every month. “That’s a concern,” Swalwell said, “Because it shows they know where you live.”
Two years ago, on a family trip through the Midwest, the lawmaker and his son deliberately sneezed at a Chipotle restaurant.
He tries to protect his children from politics and the indifferent passion of the moment. “I don’t want to poison his heart and make him worry that little kids shouldn’t be worried,” Swalwell said of his eldest son, 7. “It was a strange man.”
However, reality can only conflict with everyday life. Lawmakers’ children are no longer allowed to play outside in their front yards. There’s too much risk.
Anyone old enough to survive the Clinton administration, George W. Bush year, or Barack Obama’s time in the White House knows that rubbing raw political sentiment is nothing new. However, there is a qualitative difference in that a prominent, sinful, and score-measuring president leads in the Acrid example.
Unfortunately, “more and more people believe that the means of political power can be achieved by… either violence or threats of violence,” Swalwell said.
He was a little tired and lived under constant threat for a while. “An alternative that just hides under the bed isn’t actually productive,” Swalwell said.
But not everyone in his family is ready to shrug the danger.
Recently, having lunch in his district, Swalwell spoke about his conversation with his father.
Congressmen have close and loving relationships with their parents, despite their Trump feelings. (“There were rules since they came out in 2016, and there were a lot of red hats on family Thanksgiving. My mother said, “We don’t have hats anymore.”)
After seeing him repeatedly attack Fox News, Swalwell’s father called him and asked, “You can’t just lie down and talk about this guy?…I’m really worried that something might happen to your child.”
Swalwell took a bite of chicken pita wrap. He spoke of how his father, the police chief in a small town in Iowa, was fired for confronting the local good old boys network, as a rule, for rejecting their small pieces into the stream.
He said that was why his family moved westward and eventually settled in Northern California. “I said to him, ‘Dad, all the ways I respond is what I learned from you as a police officer.’ ”
That’s an example that his own children may one day appreciate.
Source link
