Are you willing to try to understand?
“When we come to lynch your stupid, lying commie (expletive), you'll remember that you lied on the (expletive) Bible, you piece of (expletive)!”
Freedom of speech? No.
“You're gonna die, you piece of (expletive)! We're going to hang you!”
Are those the words of someone you want to get to know better?
William Proctor decided that he did.
We need more of this. Let me explain.
Proctor — a former television journalist in Detroit for more than 30 years — now works as a private investigator. He had heard about Mark Anthony Rissi, who worked in construction for decades before his body wore out. Rissi is one of the 7,200 residents in the eastern Iowa town of Hiawatha.
But it wasn’t where Rissi lived or what he used to do for a living that made Proctor want to seek out this total stranger in another state. It’s because of what Rissi did and the threats that the U.S. Department of Justice contends that he used.
“When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you’ll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”
Rissi supported Donald Trump for president in the 2020 election. He still believes Trump won, despite the reality of what really happened.
As Trump was in the midst of his many months of falsely claiming that he won the 2020 election, Rissi was pissed. Like Trump, he refused to accept the defeat to Joe Biden.
Nearly a year after the 2020 election — in September 2021 — Rissi’s rage dialed long-distance from eastern Iowa to Arizona, according to the federal charges against him. The expletive-filled threats that I mentioned earlier came from Rissi, according to the voice mail message played during his criminal investigation.
Federal investigators found that Rissi threatened the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Supervisors in Arizona, and later, then-Attorney General of Arizona Mark Brnovich, also a Republican. Rissi wanted officials to overturn the results of Arizona’s election, in which Biden barely defeated Trump 49.36% to 49.06%.
They didn’t, of course, because they found no evidence that they should.
(About six months later, Brnovich did send a memo to the Arizona senate president claiming that his office "reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona." But they never verified allegations of widespread voter fraud.)
Now back to William Proctor. He wrote this about his decision to call Rissi:
“I chose to call Mark because I wanted unfettered opinions from a person who knew nothing about my 33-year history as a journalist in metro Detroit. I wanted to hear what drove a man to threaten another person over politics. I hoped for a breakthrough in our exchange of information and beliefs, that just maybe I’d hear a softening of the mean spirit that drove the action that will land him behind bars for the first time in his life.”
Proctor wrote about his experience with Rissi in a guest column that appeared in several newspapers, including the Des Moines Register.
Read “He’s an Iowa Trump supporter who threatened officials over the election. I asked him why,” here.
Rissi isn’t giving up on this election conspiracy even as he prepares to head off to prison. Proctor didn’t convince Rissi that Biden won.
So, what was the point of this then?
At least Proctor took the time and made an effort to better understand a person whose beliefs and actions baffled him. What if more of us tried to do that? And I don’t just mean trying to talk to someone who has committed a crime.
What if we really tried to understand why someone voted for another candidate or has a different belief about marriage, abortion, taxes, Israel, books in school…whatever the issue? Doesn’t learning more about someone else help deepen your own knowledge?
There appear to be millions of people who refuse to believe that Biden defeated Trump. One of those millions, Trump himself, spent months before the 2020 election claiming voter fraud and has now spent three years since repeating those claims.
That has fueled many of these election deniers. And this is a huge issue going forward for our country. So, what will the citizens of this country do about it?
(Dave Price is a Midwest native who has been covering Iowa issue and politics since 2001. He is a contributor to the Iowa Writers Collaborative.)
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