The official X account for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted then deleted a message endorsing the assassination of Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, hours before a man was taken into custody for an apparent attempt on her Republican rival’s life, writing that “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.”
The message came in response to a post the Democratic presidential candidate made from her official account Saturday urging Congress to renew an assault weapons ban.
The violent rhetoric was posted before former president Donald Trump became the target of an apparent second assassination attempt and was widely condemned, including by the leaders of New Hampshire’s Republican and Democratic parties.
The Libertarian Party later deleted the message, citing X’s rules.
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“It’s a shame that even on a ‘free speech’ website that libertarians cannot speak freely,” they wrote. “Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.”
The First Amendment doesn’t protect the incitement of imminent lawless action, fighting words, or true threats.
After deleting the original post, the Libertarian Party account continued to post a flurry of gun-related messages Sunday. One showed a man shooting a gun with an optical scope, wearing a T-shirt that said, “When all else fails, vote from the rooftops.” Others said, “Encouraging politicians to be shot is legal under the first amendment. It’s part of what makes this country great,” and “the point of the second amendment is to shoot and kill tyrannous politicians.”
In response to Harris’ original post, the party responded: “Under libertarian ethics this is a violent threat to violate rights and deserves the appropriate response.”
In a statement to the Globe, the FBI’s Boston office referred a reporter to the US Secret Service, where a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the state’s Libertarian Party said the organization “believes that the journalists at the Boston Globe are as evil as rapists or murderers.”
“A proper society would exclude Globe Journalists from residing within it entirely,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote in an email.
Harris most recently stated her stance on gun control during a presidential debate last week, when she addressed accusations from Trump that “she has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.”
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Harris pointed to her record of gun ownership, as well as that of her vice-presidential nominee, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
“This business about taking everyone’s guns away — Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” she said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
In a statement to the Globe, New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager condemned the Libertarian Party’s comments “in the strongest possible terms.”
“There is no room for this type of dialogue. PERIOD,” he wrote in a text message.
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley expressed a similar sentiment.
“The Libertarian Party of NH encouraging the assasination [sic] of Vice President Harris must be condemned in the strongest possible terms” he wrote on X Sunday. “Political violence is never acceptable, and their statement was disgusting, dangerous and wrong.”
Earlier this year, the same account posted that a local official in Nashua was “inhuman rot” because she declined to fly a particular flag. The message urged people to “hate” and “spit on” the official to “physically drive” people like her out of New Hampshire.
The Libertarian movement has a long history in the state. The Free State Project, for example, was established more than two decades ago to get libertarians to move to New Hampshire, become involved in politics, and create a libertarian state.
The Free State Project, which pledged in 2000 to recruit 20,000 libertarians to the state, did not respond to requests to comment.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
