Former GOP Congressman Reveals on CNN His District Office Had Safe Room ‘In the Event a Lunatic Came In’

Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) revealed on CNN that when he served in Congress, his district office had a safe room “in the event a lunatic came in.”

Dent represented Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District between 2005 and 2018, and is currently a CNN contributor.

During a segment on CNN Newsroom on Monday about Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) sharing a threatening voice message she had received, Dent said, “I think really is the issue is we’ve kind of forgotten how to have to civil debates in this country, not just in Congress, but among ourselves. That is the problem. But this problem has been around for a while.”

Dent continued:

I used to have a safe room in my congressional district office, for my staff to go in, in the event a lunatic came in. We had pictures of about five or six people, like mug shots, if any of these people ever show up in the office or call the office, contact the police immediately.

So we have people out there, you know, who are unstable, unbalanced, and make those kinds of calls, like Debbie Dingell received. And Fred Upton also got a doozy of one, too. And these people are awful.

I don’t know how you teach people to be respectful. You can actually disagree with your opponent, you can debate them while acknowledging the legitimacy of their argument, you can do that. It’s not hard to do, but we have lost that. It’s either my way or the highway. If you disagree with me, it’s a human rights violation, and they’ll go to these extreme leapt and use rhetoric that, frankly, at times crosses the line to almost a terroristic threat.

Watch above, via CNN.