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Who is Richard Marx? Rand Paul blames '80s pop star for ‘white powder’ package and ‘encouraging violence’

The package came to Paul's home with an illustration showing the popular Kentucky Senator in a neck brace, alongside the words, 'I’ll finish what your neighbor started, you mother*****r'

Sen Rand Paul has suggested that 1980s pop sensation Richard Marx was behind a suspicious package filled with white powder that was delivered to his home. Marx has strongly denied the allusion.

The package came in with an illustration showing the popular Kentucky Senator in a neck brace, alongside the words, "I’ll finish what your neighbor started, you mother*****r," Fox News reported.

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Paul linked the package to a Sunday tweet by Marx in a statement following the incident, saying the “Don't Mean Nothing” hitmaker had offered to buy a drink and give a hug to Paul's neighbor who had physically assaulted the senator and broken his ribs during a fight in 2017.

In his statement, Paul lambasted Twitter for allowing “C-list celebrities” to “encourage violence” against him and his loved ones. “Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder filled letter," he added. The singer-songwriter pushed back against the accusations on Twitter. 

Who is Richard Marx?

Marx is known as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor and producer who made his name as a contemporary pop/rock artist in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The gifted balladeer issued a series of platinum albums and soared to the top of the charts with singles such as 'Should've Known Better' and 'Right Here Waiting'.

In 2004, he won the Song of the Year Grammy Award for 'Dance with My Father', a number he co-wrote with and for Luther Vandross. He has since continued to record, act, and perform, releasing his 12th album, 'Limitless', last year. Since his 1987 debut album, Marx has sold over 30 million albums across the globe.

The Chicago native began singing at the tender age of 5 and performed commercial music in the late 1960s. According to Allmusic.com, his father Dick Marx was a prominent jazz musician who also owned a jingle company. Marx was thereby able to write his own material in his teens, and some of those songs found their way to Lionel Richie, who agreed to rope in Marx as a backing vocalist.

Marx worked with numerous industry greats, including Whitney Houston and Julio Iglesias, before moving into songwriting. He wrote tunes for Kenny Rogers and the 'St Elmo's Fire' soundtrack before landing a solo contract with EMI Records, per the website.

Political commentary

Marx often railed against the previous administration under Trump, as well as his allies. He took to Twitter following Trump's announcement that he planned to sign an executive order to temporarily halt immigration to the US. “Uh-huh. Can you sign something to keep the white f—sticks in Michigan waving confederate flags away from me?” Marx wrote.

Marx, who spent the lockdown with wife Daisy Fuentes (of MTV fame), told Variety last year that he wasn't always passionate about politics. “It started when Bush lost the popular vote against Gore,” he told the magazine. “I still feel Bush should have been charged with war crimes."

However, he noted that his feelings about Bush “pale in comparison to the anger I feel over this [Trump] presidency. I feel this guy is a despicable piece of trash. The country will recover, even if he’s in for another four years. We will recover, but we will never be the same. He will leave a s**t stain on this country for the next generation. He has no redeeming qualities.”

“At this point, I’d rather have Jeffrey Dahmer over Donald Trump,” he added.