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On Monday evening, Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan shared a threatening voicemail he received for voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Point to be noted that Upton was one of 13 Republicans who voted to advance the infrastructure bill alongside all but 6 Democrats in the House of Representatives on Friday evening. One voicemail he received that he shared with Anderson Cooper called him a traitor. One voicemail said, “I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f***ing family dies”. The voicemail labeled him a “f***ing piece of s*** traitor”. Cooper said Upton’s office told him the voicemail wasn’t an isolated incident and that multiple people said similar things. Upton said, “It’s a real step back”, and added that the person who left the voicemail wasn’t a constituent of his.

Upton pointed out how Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted his number and those of the 12 other Republicans who voted for the bill. He defended his vote and said the bill was bipartisan and the man who left the threatening voicemail was from South Carolina. However, the state’s senior senator, Lindsey Graham (a Republican) also voted for the bill in the upper chamber. Upton said, “We had a long history of trying to work together, this doesn’t change the tax code, it’s paid for, traditional infrastructure, including broadband, roads, and highways”. His vote on infrastructure is only the most recent example of when he crossed party lines this year.

It is noteworthy that Upton was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump earlier this year, for his actions inciting the 6 January riot on Capitol Hill. In response, former US President Donald Trump endorsed his primary challenger Steve Carra, along with other GOP primary challengers. Fellow GOP Rep Nicole Malliotakis of New York, who also voted for the infrastructure bill, also spoke to a news outlet on Monday and tried to credit Donald Trump with the passage of the bill, even though President Joe Biden will sign it. Malliotakis said, “President Trump laid the groundwork for this infrastructure to pass”.