Jesse Ferguson was Hillary Clinton’s deputy national press secretary during the campaign. Sunday he wrote a piece for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in which he argued that resistance to Trump’s election should focus on the upcoming gubernatorial election in Virginia. Ferguson concluded his piece with a reference to the state’s motto “sic semper tyranis” saying that made the state the perfect place to begin resisting Trump. The piece opens on the topic of resistance to Trump:

Last Friday, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. Gulp. I spent two years working on the effort to make sure this wouldn’t happen. We failed. Sigh.

As he becomes president, Democrats, independents and even some Republicans across the country are asking the same questions about how they should stand up, how they should fight back and how they should resist.

After comparing Democratic resistance to the rebel alliance in Star Wars, Ferguson writes that Democrats have a chance to strike “the first major electoral blow to the Trump administration” by electing Democrats in Virginia. His piece concludes with three reasons why Virginia should be the focus of the resistance:

Virginia is the right place for the decline of the new Trump administration to formally begin. First, we’re a diverse state, a tolerant state, and a state that appreciates progress, building a brighter future for every resident. Second, we’re a state that has steadily moved away from our one-time role as the Capital of the Confederacy and now largely embraces who we are and who we want to be as a country — things Trump has often rejected.

Third, and most importantly, the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia is Sic Semper Tyrannis — Thus Always to Tyrants. Where better to launch the resistance?

Given that the entire piece is about resisting Trump it’s impossible to read that final paragraph without the insinuation that Trump is a tyrant. That seems pretty extreme given that he had only been in office two days when this was published.

But there’s another obvious reason this reference seems inappropriate. Sic Semper Tyranis is what presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth shouted after firing the bullet that killed President Abraham Lincoln. Surely Ferguson, as a professional politico, is aware of this historical resonance. His reference to this phrase immediately after a reference to “the Confederacy” doesn’t seems like an accident.

I’m not suggesting Jesse Ferguson is calling for Trump’s assassination. He is clearly talking about working to elect Democrats in his home state, something which is obviously fair game. But he chose to end his piece with a phrase forever connected to the murder of a Republican president in a divided America. Invoking it to counsel “resistance” against a newly installed Republican president seems ill considered. At a minimum, Ferguson has implied Trump is a tyrant, which seems pretty unhinged even coming from a former Clinton spokesman.