Philly DA Makes Extremely Philly Threat to Vote-Suppressors
It’s Election Day, and everyone’s a nervous wreck. Enter Larry Krasner, the district attorney of Philadelphia, with a refreshingly straightforward message to any bad actors looking to interfere with the electoral process: Knock it off, or so help me I will turn this car right around.
“Anybody who thinks it’s time to play militia, eff around and find out,” Krasner said on Monday in a tone reflecting the ethos of a city notorious for throwing batteries at football teams it doesn’t like. “Anybody who thinks it’s time to insult, to deride, to go to the streets and threaten people, eff around and find out. We do have the cuffs, we do have the jail cells, we do have the Philly juries, and we do have the state prisons.” They sure do! Tell ’em, Larry. Call out their tomfoolery!
Widely loathed by conservatives, Krasner is well known in the Philadelphia area for his no-bullshit demeanor. He was elected in 2017 after running on a criminal-justice-reform platform, promising to overhaul a system that “has systematically picked on poor people, primarily Black and brown people,” as he said during his campaign. Krasner’s efforts earned opprobrium from law-and-order conservatives in the state, who blamed him for spiking rates of gun violence, and the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to impeach him in 2022. (In early 2023, the trial was indefinitely postponed after a judge ruled that the move to impeach did not meet constitutional standards.)
Most recently, Krasner made headlines for suing Elon Musk and his pro-Trump America PAC, attempting to bar Musk from influencing the election by handing out million-dollar checks to swing-state voters, an effort Krasner has referred to as a scam. On Monday, a Philadelphia judge blocked Krasner’s injunction, but judging by his authoritative vibe yesterday, he seems to be bouncing back okay.
Because he’s right: The MAGA heads will find out! This is a city in which sports fans once famously booed Santa Claus. They threw snowballs at the 1989 Philadelphia Eagles even though the Eagles had just won. If you so much as think about asking for anything other than Whiz on your cheesesteak at Geno’s, you will get punched in the face, and there’s not a lawyer in the Delaware Valley who will argue in your defense. Anyone who’s dumb enough to start shit in Philly deserves exactly what they get. So if you’re freaking out about the election, take a Klonopin, chill out, and rest easy. Larry Krasner’s got this.