fuck the ~~gang~~ that is the GOP.

fuck the terrorist organization that is the GOP.

No, it was absolutely a Mafia-style threat. Here is the entire article, emphasis added:

Politico reporter Adam Wren, while reporting on potential Trump attorney general Mike Davis, was subjected to ominous threats and intimidation from an unidentified Trump ally.

As part of his lengthy profile of Davis, Wren wrote about an experience he had writing down notes about Donald Trump Jr. telling Davis that he wanted Davis to be Trump's next attorney general for the next four years.

At this point, an unidentified woman accosted Wren and demanded that he hand over his phone and delete the notes he had taken.

Wren then tried to leave the area -- but was subsequently blocked from the exits by four men who similarly demanded that he hand over his phone.

Davis tried to explain to the woman that he had to catch a flight to meet up with his family, to which she replied, "You should have thought about your kids before you did what you did."

"After roughly 15 minutes of this standoff, I searched for another exit," Wren continued. "I ran down a hallway into a stairwell. Two people followed me. When I was out on the street, Davis called me. By this point, Davis had confronted the aide near the elevators and dressed her down. You don’t ask a reporter to delete their notes, he told her, according to both Davis and a second person he recounted his remarks to briefly after. This isn’t North Korea."

The Trump campaign subsequently investigated and claimed to Wren that the woman in question was not formally involved in Trump's campaign.

5 people believed that they had a right to do any of that, on any level. It had nothing to do with a flight.

“What he did,” though, was just take notes as a reporter. He took notes then tried to leave with them, where he was accosted and threatened and told to delete the notes. When he continued to express a desire to leave and mentioned his kids, that comment came out.

I agree that it’s not as bad as the headline makes it sound. But it also doesn’t seem like the reporter did anything that he shouldn’t have done which would have given him reason to be accosted…

Charitable reading, this was just an off-the-cuff comment at the maturity level of, “I know you are but what am I?” where the aide used a quick comeback without thinking much about her words.