Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is convinced that a tweet by singer-songwriter Richard Marx is the reason he received a suspicious package at his home on Monday, May 24th.
As Politico reported, Paul received an envelope at his home in Kentucky that contained an unidentified white powder that’s currently being examined for harmful substances. Fox News then noted that the envelope contained a photoshopped image of Paul in a neck brace, arm cast, and walking with a crutch with a note that read, “I’ll finish what your neighbor started, you motherfucker.”
The note was a reference to an infamous incident in 2017 when Paul was assaulted by his neighbor, Rene Boucher, allegedly over a dispute involving yard waste (Boucher eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 days in prison). While getting his ribs broken over a lawn care dispute is probably one of the more interesting and well-known tidbits in Paul’s biography, he issued a statement linking the mysterious package specifically to Marx’s tweet.
Marx’s offending tweet, which he sent out ostensibly after Paul said he had no immediate plans to get the Covid-19 vaccine: “I’ll say it again: If I ever meet Rand Paul’s neighbor I’m going to hug him and buy him as many drinks as he can consume.”
In his statement, Paul said, “I take these threats immensely seriously. As a repeated target of violence, it is reprehensible that Twitter allows C-list celebrities to encourage violence against me and my family. Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder-filled letter.”
Marx — who’s best known for his late-Eighties and early-Nineties hits like “Hold on to the Nights” and “Right Here Waiting,” but has also become a favored celebrity critic of conservative politicians — has happily rebuffed the allegation leveled against him. “I’m the only person on Twitter who’s ever referenced Rand Paul’s neighbor,” he said in one tweet. “Must have been me.”
And in another tweet, Marx shared an article from last March, at the start of the pandemic, when Paul tested positive for Covid-19 and potentially exposed some of his colleagues, quipping, “You know who actually put multiple people’s lives at potential risk?”
