(WWJ) -- Michigan congresswoman Debbie Dingell has shared an abusive voicemail message she received in which the caller threatened the lives of her and her family.
During an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Dingell played the disturbing clip, in which an unknown man says he “hopes her family dies in front of her.”
Speaking with host Dana Bash, Dingell said the voicemail is one of many threatening messages she’s received since the death of her husband Representative John Dingell in 2019.
Dingell says she feels she became a target after former President Donald Trump criticized her for voting to impeach him, and made disparaging comments about her late husband.
"John was my late husband and it, you know, once you're in that Trump hate tunnel, you kind of don't escape it," Dingell said. "There are a lot of good people out there that are really wonderful to meet, et cetera, but we average several of those [threats] a week."
"My friends look at me and say, 'How can you do this?' We've got to be careful not to normalize it, but I'm not going to not do my job,” she continued. “I’m not going to go out and not be with people. I'm not going to go out and not listen to them. I want the American people to think about what's happening in our country. That this kind of hate, this fear, is happening in communities across the country.”
Dingell and Republican congressman Fred Upton, also of Michigan, appeared on “State of the Union” on Sunday to discuss the current environment in Washington D.C., which Upton described as “toxic.”
"It's pretty toxic, there's no question about it," Upton said. "It's a pretty toxic place. I've never seen anything like this before."
For her part, Dingell says she hopes that bringing the threatening messages to light will help remind people to be kinder to one another.
"What we need to do is to, all of us, get back to just remembering how much we have in common, just respecting each other, treating each other with dignity," she said. "And I say to everybody, a little act of kindness towards anybody can make the difference in that person's day, week, or life."
Late last month, Dingell also made headlines when her Dearborn office was broken into and vandalized. No suspects have been named in that investigation.
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