A man running as a Republican candidate for Congress in Florida was arrested this week for allegedly posting videos of himself, in full military uniform, calling on Americans to kill Donald Trump in the name of God. William Upham, 35, a former marine and former state prosecutor, now faces up to five years in federal prison. The story gets weirder from there.
Two Shots to the Chest, One to the Head, and a Congressional Run
According to the criminal complaint reviewed by The Guardian, Upham didn't just vaguely suggest something bad should happen to the president. He got specific. In the first video, he recommended using a semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15 and described a kill shot sequence: two rounds to the chest, one to the head. He called this a "very high chance of death." Yes, that's correct. A man currently registered as a Republican write-in candidate for Florida's fifth congressional district posted a military-style instructional video on how to murder the sitting president.
Upham appeared in federal court in Jacksonville on Thursday, according to the US attorney's office, and was taken into custody immediately after. Attorney Gregory Kehoe announced the charge in a press release. Kehoe's office noted that Upham had been both a marine and a state prosecutor, which means he understood exactly what federal threats against a protected person look like legally and did it anyway.
The Antichrist Angle, Because of Course
Here's where it tips from alarming into something harder to categorize. The Guardian reports that religious conviction appears to have been the driving force behind Upham's statements. In his videos, Upham allegedly cited the Bible's description of the antichrist as "a ruler backed by Satan who demands to be worshipped" and then stated, directly, that Trump matches every one of those descriptions.
So his argument, as best as one can reconstruct it, is: God told me to do this. Trump is the antichrist. The Bible says the antichrist must be destroyed. Therefore, here is a tactical breakdown of the most effective way to shoot a person. This is not political opposition. This is a man in uniform posting what amounts to a religiously framed assassination tutorial on social media.
A separate communication, which investigators say Upham sent to a third party, made his intent even clearer. According to the complaint, Upham wrote that he made the videos to "declare war" on Trump and that he would "kill President Trump at the time that God chooses." The Secret Service also found that Upham had active access to firearms.
Running for Office While Declaring War on the Government
Let's sit with this detail for a moment. Upham is, according to public records cited by The Guardian, a registered write-in candidate in the Republican primary for a Florida congressional seat. He is simultaneously running for office and calling for the violent overthrow of the executive branch. That is not a political contradiction you see every day. It's not even a contradiction you see every decade.
In the first video, Upham apparently wore his Marine uniform while issuing what he called "a call to arms." He told viewers they "must overthrow the Trump administration on behalf of God" and offered to provide "military instruction" on how to accomplish this. The acting US secretary of the navy, Hung Cao, responded on social media, writing: "Unacceptable. William Upham is no longer a Marine and does not represent our values or ethos." Which is the kind of statement that seems obvious but apparently still needed to be said.
What the Charges Actually Mean
Upham faces a single federal charge of threatening to kill or do bodily harm to the president of the United States. Under federal law, that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The Secret Service opened the investigation after receiving tips about the videos, reviewed the footage, tracked down the third-party communication, and confirmed he had access to weapons and had made "concerning statements to law enforcement as recently as this month," according to The Guardian's reporting.
That last part is worth pausing on. Concerning statements to law enforcement. Recently. While already under Secret Service investigation. For threatening to kill the president. Whatever the final picture of Upham's mental state turns out to be, the behavior he exhibited in the lead-up to this arrest was not that of someone who believed he was going to quietly get away with it.
The Dingo Take
Look, threats against the president are serious regardless of who the president is, and this one clears every bar for serious. Specific method. Specific target. Weapons available. Multiple documented statements. This isn't someone who said something inflammatory on a bad night and woke up horrified. This is a man who, across multiple videos and written communications, laid out a religiously motivated case for presidential assassination and apparently felt settled enough about it to keep his uniform on for the production.
What makes this genuinely strange, beyond the obvious, is the candidate angle. Upham wasn't a random person ranting into the void. He was a former state prosecutor, a former marine, and an active congressional candidate, running, improbably, as a Republican. Whatever catastrophic break with reality brought him to this point, it didn't stop him from filing the paperwork. The man was trying to win a primary and kill a president simultaneously. In 2026 America, that sentence is grammatically correct and legally actionable.
There is no universe in which this ends well for William Upham. Federal prosecutors don't bring these cases unless the evidence is airtight, and by the sound of it, the complaint practically wrote itself. But the story is a useful mirror for a particular kind of political moment, one where the rhetoric of spiritual warfare and existential enemies has been loud enough and long enough that it eventually finds its way into someone who takes it more literally than the people who built the megaphone ever intended. File that one wherever you keep things that should make everyone uncomfortable.
