Transgender Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) said he did not fight to use the women’s restroom on Capitol Hill because “someone could shoot me,” and he did not sign up to be a martyr.

McBride, a man formally known as Tim who now claims to be a woman, spoke about the bathroom war during an appearance on Queerly Informed.

“After that policy was passed to bar transgender people from using the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity, you told the Guardian that… you’re not here to fight about bathrooms,” host Camryn Bowden said.

“You’re here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down the costs facing families. Some trans people afterwards felt that that response was not maybe not fair, but it was the wrong decision by not fighting back. Do you feel that your decision to not address that and to again address the issues which matter most, which is the bread and butter, cost of living things, do you think that was the right decision in the end?” Bowden pressed.

McBride said he was absolutely confident in his decision and said it was correct “for a whole host of reasons,” including his fears someone might have shot him for using the women’s restroom.

“One, I don’t quite understand what people would say, like fight on the bathroom issue. Like, if I said that I wasn’t, if I said that I was going to ignore the rule, someone could shoot me, right?” McBride claimed.

“Like that’s just the reality of it, right? Someone would take matters — could take matters into their own hands to try to prevent me from using a restroom if I had said that I was going to ignore that rule. And I didn’t get elected to be a martyr. I got elected to be a member of Congress,” he added.

The dramatic statement is ironic, given that McBride previously stated that it is Republicans — not himself or members of his own party — who “debase” themselves for attention.

“I think that’s one of the things we actually don’t talk a lot about… One of the things you most frequently hear about these people when they get to Congress is they were so normal when they got there,” McBride said during an appearance on Pod Save America.

“They find themselves going viral, and as is the case with many addictions, they will debase themselves and inflict collateral damage on anyone else in pursuit of that next high, and it’s the same strategy that I employed before, but it’s a different understanding, because in the context of people coming after me early on, my job was not to take the bait,” the congressman said.

Notably, this is the same McBride who proudly claimed to make “right-wingers’ heads explode” with his unbiblical status as an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church.

“I can do weddings; I also perform communion. That probably makes some right-wingers’ heads explode,” he stated in April.