Transcript: Ruby Cramer

My interview with the Washington Post reporter

This week saw the arrest of an armed man in Florida, in the wake of an apparent assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump — the second in roughly two months. My guest on the program is a reporter who’s been covering the rise of political extremism in America for The Washington Post. In this episode, taped in late August, she shares the insights she gained reporting on a man who went to prison for uttering threats against Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.    

Ruby Cramer is a national political enterprise reporter at The Washington Post.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: Some months back, I read a piece that you published in the Washington Post on political extremism. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It is one of the most nuanced pieces I've ever read on that subject. Your story focuses on Joe Morelli, who went to prison for uttering threats against Marjorie Taylor Greene. Give us the broad strokes of that story.

RC: The story idea started with this notion that more and more people in America are making threats against politicians. We've seen cases recorded by the Capitol Police, which is the law enforcement body that is in charge of protecting members of Congress. They have seen cases of threats rise pretty much for the past five or six years, to historic highs. Also, it just feels like you log on to the Internet and no matter who is saying what, if you look down in the comments, there is someone tossing off a threat in a very casual way. It just feels like it's part of our political discourse now. 

So, we wanted to find a case of a threat that had escalated enough that it would have gone through the courts in some way, and track it from the beginning. And ask: What's behind these threats? Why are people making threats against politicians? Who makes a threat? For what reason, and under what conditions? And what's the story behind the person who decided to pick up the phone one night? 

As you said, the case surrounds a man named Joe Morelli, who lives in upstate New York. One night he picked up the phone and called the office of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is probably one of the most notorious — in some cases loved, and in some cases hated — Republican members of Congress. He left a series of voicemails on her office phone one night making threats to injure her. In about two weeks he was picked up by the FBI, brought to an interview room. His case went through the courts, and he spent about 90 days in federal prison. 

I think with Joe, what we found is that the story of this threat was really a story about a lot of different things: political extremism, the reaction of people to politics today, taking it so personally, getting so angry about it. In Joe's case, he is a person who has suffered with mental health issues his entire life. As much as his story was about politics, it was also a story about mental health and loneliness. A man who had essentially been pushed to the limits of what he could handle and made a decision to act out on that one night. And it led to his life being turned upside down.

TH: There is so much humanity in this story. But it also does the work of really good journalism, which is it helps us understand the issue so much better. And complicates the conversation around it in really, I think, healthy ways. One of the things that I found so remarkable about the piece is the realizations that Morelli comes to in prison. He met someone who participated in January 6th. Walk us through that interaction and what Morelli told you that he took from it.

RC: He was in a federal prison called Fort Dix in New Jersey. One day a guy pulled him aside in one of the main dorm rooms at the prison and said, “I think there's a guy that you should meet. His name is Patrick Stedman, and he just got here to Fort Dix and you guys might have something in common.” And Joe said, “What's his story? Who is he?” The guy who is trying to make the introduction said, “He was involved in the January 6th insurrection.” 

I think Joe — who had made this threat against Marjorie Taylor Greene because her policies drove him so crazy, he thought that she was essentially a dangerous politician and he was fairly liberal — he thought, “I'm not going to have anything in common with the guy who went to the Capitol on January 6th.” But the man said, “It's kind of like two sides of the same coin. You guys ended up here for the same reasons.” So Joe said, “Okay, I'll meet him.” They brought Patrick down and they had what Joe described to me as a nice, thoughtful conversation. According to Joe, Patrick surprised him. He was thoughtful and smart and had a family at home. Joe said he was very well-educated. They had a talk about how Patrick had come to be involved in the January 6th events. And what Patrick said to Joe, which I think he really related to, was, “I kind of just got swept up in the whole thing. I didn't think. I saw what was being said online, and I joined. I let that wave of emotion and anger and upset get the better of me. And I ended up going to the Capitol that day.” 

What Morelli said to me was that he really understood that. It's essentially the same thing that happened to him. The night that he made his threat against Marjorie Taylor Greene — the thing that set off all of this was he was watching videos on YouTube one night. In between the clips, one of the ads that had come up that night was a political campaign ad for Greene in which she fired a sniper rifle at a Toyota Prius that had been labeled “socialism.” The message in the ad was: “I'm going to blow up the Democrats’ socialist agenda.” Joe saw that and he snapped. That's what led him to go to his computer, Google Marjorie Taylor Greene's phone number, call her office and threaten her. So when Patrick said, “I got swept up in it,” I think Joe felt like, “Well, I also got swept up in my reaction to what I saw on the TV that night.”

TH: At the end of the piece, he reflects about the threats he uttered and concludes that maybe he needed to feel heard. Maybe the threats were an expression of his loneliness, his regrets. For example, he no longer speaks to his children. What do you think his specific case tells us about the broader issue with Americans right now, across the political spectrum, who are feeling disconnected, lonely, and disenfranchised?

RC: I think it's all those things that you just said. Politics is, I think, more and more a stand-in for some of the community and institutional ties that have eroded in the U.S. over the past several decades. You can find that validation in your beliefs about what is happening politically by going online and finding like-minded people who are just as worked up, or just as angry about what the other side is doing. You can also go online and find reasons to get riled up and angry at the other side and find that sort of inverse community. 

For Joe Morelli, he's very close to his sister, but other than that, I think he has lost ties to some of his family. As you said, he doesn't speak to his two kids anymore. I think that is a huge regret in his life. I think he struggled. He shared with me a lot of regrets that he had in life: If only he had handled his divorce better, maybe he would be in touch with his kids. If only he had stayed at one job, he would still be working today. The narrative of his life, as he phrased it to me, was one that was laced with a lot of regret. And a lot of time spent alone.

So I think with politics being what it is now in America, people can find that sense of connection or disconnection, and they're turning to that more and more. When we think about getting worked up about politics, there's often so much that's behind that. I think in Joe's case, it was loneliness. It was mental health issues, it was regret.

I think it's really easy to dismiss cases of political threats or political extremism as, “That's just a crazy guy living in his basement who just lost it one night and picked up the phone.” There's a story behind that, and there's a human being behind that. I think that story can be about one person's individual life and the choices that they have made over 50 years. It's also a story of where we are in America right now. So, I think it's both. I think if you took any of these threat cases, you would find that complicated, nuanced story.

TH: I do want to talk about that in a moment. But first, typically what I see in the legacy press right now is more reporting on right wing extremism. This is a case of left wing extremism. I’m curious, did you experience any pushback? What was the response from left-leaning readers?

RC: It's funny — because this happens more and more — but I think we got some interesting knee-jerk reactions to the story on both sides. I saw people on the right saying, “I cannot believe The Washington Post spent 5,000 words writing about the emotional struggles of a man who made dangerous threats against a Republican member of Congress.” Then I saw people on the left saying, “I can't believe The Washington Post interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene about the threats that she faces and how that's very difficult for her, and how that's changed her life and affected her family.” 

It was important in the story to come at this threat from every single person that it affected, and that included Marjorie Taylor Greene. So we worked very hard to get an interview with her to talk to her about this. Because, in her estimation, she's the most threatened member of Congress. She's the member of Congress who receives the most political threats — and that has affected her life. One element of this case was that, in response to Morelli’s threat, she paid for about a $60,000 security fence around her house. She actually went through the court system to try to get Moralli to pay for it. He has no money, so that was a whole mess. Eventually the judge said that he wasn't responsible for paying for it. But I mean, a woman doesn't put up a tall chainlink fence with barbed wire around her house for no reason. 

For members of Congress, or politicians in America, this is now a part of daily life in public service or in politics. We wanted to show her side of the story as well and to understand how threats like this affected her. She talked about walking down the street and having someone come up to her and say, “Congresswoman, can I get a selfie?” They will come in to pose for the photo, and then they will turn around, and basically say, “Gotcha. I hate you.” They are two inches away from your face. On the one hand, I'm sure there will be people who will listen and say, “Well, she brought this on with her own very volatile rhetoric.” But on the other hand, no one deserves to be threatened. 

I think anyone can agree that having someone two inches away from your face screaming at you is not what we want out of our public discourse around politics. But that's where we are.

Anyway, to get back to your question, it was really important, I think, to show both sides. Then we got a lot of reaction and response to that. But I think at the end of the day, hopefully the piece just tried to understand, on a human level, how this kind of thing affects everybody involved — the person on the receiving end and the person who is making the threat.

TH: As you point out in your story, in 2023, there were 8,008 recorded threats against members of Congress. Another story you did involved an incident with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal — also a very powerful story. This got attention from the highest level of office in the United States, with President Joe Biden reading your story. I am curious what drew you to this particular topic of political extremism, and what are some of the common threads you are noticing in all of these cases?

RC: It's a great question. I just think the fact that public service in America now means danger and fear and anger being part of your daily life, that's something. I think, of course, we've seen assassination attempts and we've seen political violence; there's a long history of political violence in America. But I think the degree to which it has become a part of the job day-to-day, in such a mundane way, has changed over the last five or 10 years.

I was seeing headlines about different cases, like the Pramila Jayapal case. Essentially a man who didn't like her politics kept driving by her house. And one night came, stopped, had a gun, started screaming obscenities right outside her house. I had seen a few local headlines about it from Seattle, which is where she lives. But I just thought, “The way this must affect the lives of people who are doing public service right now!” Whatever you think of politics, that is a human story.

I think when people have to incorporate fear and anger into their daily lives in politics, something is really wrong with our system. So, that is what drew me to this series of stories.

I've written about other members of Congress, or other politicians, who have talked about the way in which politics now in America create so much distance between human beings. Lauren Underwood, who's a Democratic member of Congress from Illinois, and the youngest Black member of Congress, told me that she can feel when she's walking with her family down the street, and there is someone who comes up to her and is angry or whatever … If she is walking with her parents or her sister, she can feel them drifting away from her. They don't want to be near it. She told me, “I don't blame them, it's ugly.” She could feel them almost instinctively, subconsciously inching away physically from the situation. But then she's looking at that thinking, “The people who love me are distancing themselves from me, because they don't want to be around this.”

I don't know, I think there is a lot for us to try to understand there. As much as I have written about politicians and how they have to deal with this, I think it was also really important to take just a regular everyday person who succumbed to this anger, and acted on it, and understand where they are coming from as well. I think there is a lot of room for empathy in our storytelling now. That's what I think we need more of, and that is what I try to bring to some of these pieces

TH: That leads me into what I wanted to talk about next, which is the media — and our role in all of this. Of course, it's not just politics that is polarized, but the media is as well. One of Joe Morelli's triggers was watching political news. Both Morelli and his fellow inmate who took part in January 6th shared this impulse to detox from the news and from the anger in it. I think a lot of people feel like that sometimes. The polarization of the media is something that I have covered a lot. I look to one of your Washington Post colleagues columnist, Amanda Ripley, for strategies on coping with that. Her piece in Solutions Journalism, “Complicating the Narratives,” is one I return to a lot. And now your piece on Joe Morelli is one I send to a lot of younger journalists, as an example of what that can look like in practice. How do you think through the challenges of the polarized media environment we are in? And how do you personally go about resisting that trend in your own work?