* Isabel told you earlier that Gov. Pritkzer listed several fairly recent acts of political violence. A reporter followed up…

Q: Speaking about the list you ticked off at the beginning of this, all of the violence targeted at elected officials. How are you feeling personally? Are you talking with your family, with your security team about the temperature change? How has it changed since your first day of office to today?

Pritzker: Well, without revealing any of you know, what I think the State Police does in their protective efforts for elected officials in the state, I’ll just say they’ve done a terrific job of keeping my family safe. We have the best State Police in the country, and I really mean that. We have the best Executive Protection Unit in the country. I’m very proud of the people that I work with.

But if you’re asking, you know, the number of threats that have come in over the last few days has been an enormous multiple of those that were coming in in the days before. And and we’ve seen an increase in threats in the state of Illinois over the last seven, eight years, seven years, at least, since I’ve been governor six and a half, seven years. And not just about me. I’m just saying I think this is happening across the country and it’s happening in the state of Illinois.

But the truth is that the number of threats and the number of people who seem to want to engage in political violence has increased substantially. And I would like very much for people to just take a breath, take a step back, and recognize that, you know, there’s political violence that occurs against people on both sides and on both parties, and that our country would be a lot better off if people would see that. Democracy is really the method by which we avoid political violence. And I think over the course of the history of the United States, that’s been what makes this country great.