GOP Hypocrisy Over Pelosi Attack Falls To A New Nadir
Republicans who preach law and order and foment violence, be forewarned, you reap what you sew.
But the Republicans do not call for violence, says the likes of Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who posted a video of him firing a semi-automatic assault rifle at a shooting range with the hashtag #FirePelosi. It’s just celebrating the Second Amendment, crowed Emmer, who voted to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election; supports a ban on same-sex marriage; and praised trump’s 2017 executive order to temporarily curtail immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
The day after that brutal attack on Saturday, Oct. 28, Mrs. Pelosi, President Biden and members of congress expressed anger, dismay and sadness, except for trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who were both stone silent, something totally out of character for both Republicans.
McCarthy was not exactly silent in 2021, when he joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, it will be hard not to “hit Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-Calif., condemned the silence on the right after the attack on Mr. Pelosi, referencing a similar reaction from the right-wing in November 2021, when far-right Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., tweeted a video of Ocasio-Cortez being killed, and McCarthy’s tepid defense of him.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., couldn’t bring herself to offer personal condolences but said that, of course, she condemned a rise in violent crime and that she also has been targeted by “violence & death threats every day” presumably by Democrats.
Greene’s history of violent conspiracy laden comments started before she was elected to Congress in 2020, when she repeatedly expressed support for executing prominent Democratic politicians, including Pelosi. Greene liked a Facebook comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” as a way of removing Pelosi as speaker and in a video of a speech Greene gave promoting a 2019 petition she’d launched to impeach Pelosi for “crimes of treason,” Greene called Pelosi “a traitor to our country” and said the speaker could be executed for treason.
Other Republican officials and candidates have found violence a time-tested political attention grabber. Jim Lamon, who lost in the GOP primary for Senate in Arizona, released a Western-themed ad that featured himself dressed as a sheriff shooting at actors playing President Biden, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Pelosi. A caption dubs the speaker “Crazy Face Pelosi” before the Republican candidate announces, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you” and begins shooting at the trio of Democrats. Targeting Kelly was especially heinous as Kelly’s wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head in 2011 while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket in an attack that killed six people.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., wreaked with insensitivity. While campaigning for a House candidate in Virginia a few days after the attack on Mr. Pelosi, Youngkin said, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her (Nancy Pelosi) back to be with him in California.” Does Youngkin mean to send Mrs. Pelosi back to the same hospital where Mr. Pelosi is recovering?
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and other Republicans have tried to deny reports that domestic political violence has been overwhelmingly by right wing extremists. They claim that the FBI whistleblowers told them they were under pressure to classify cases as domestic violent extremism to pad the stats as part of the Biden administration’s focus on domestic terrorism. Jordan said that if the Republicans win control of the House, they will investigate (and they hope to find more than they did with the Benghazi investigation).
On Friday afternoon, less than a week after the assault on Mr. Pelosi, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, attacked the speaker at an event for Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, saying, “Are you ready to fire Nancy Pelosi?” McDaniel said the attack on Mr. Pelosi was a problem on “both sides,” Democrats and Republicans.
“Violence is up across the board. Lee Zeldin was attacked, we had [an] assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh, and Democrats didn’t repudiate that. Joe Biden didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh,” McDaniel said.
In reality, not in the lying spin world of McDaniel, Biden spoke strongly against the assault on Zeldin at a campaign rally and repudiated the incident in which a man called 911 on himself near Kavanaugh’s home.
The facts clearly repudiate McDaniel’s claims. The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the U.S., while one was killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats.
Mike Loychik, an Ohio Republican state representative, politicized and minimized the attack against Mr. Pelosi when he tweeted that he hoped Paul Pelosi made a full recovery, but he also took a swipe at the calls from some liberal lawmakers to “Defund the police.”
“I hope San Francisco dispatched their very best social worker to respond to the brutal assault of Nancy Pelosi’s husband,” Loychik wrote.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., deemed the attack on Mr. Pelosi as “disgusting” and “horrible” but quickly pivoted to the two men who were arrested for attacking a Republican canvasser for fellow Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
As usual, Trump’s son, Donald Jr., took the prize for least taste, when he shared a joke image mocking the attack on Paul Pelosi, showing a “Halloween costume” consisting of a hammer and a pair of underpants, a reference to an absurd conspiracy theory about the attack. Prior to his post joking about a Halloween costume, Trump Jr. sank even lower by posting, “Imagine how safe the country would be if democrats took all violent crime as seriously as they’re taking the Paul Pelosi situation. They simply don’t care about you.”
Elon Musk, the richest man in the universe told all to relax as he promised to bring balance to Twitter, now that he owns it. He immediately tweeted to his 100 million followers, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story,” after the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco. That possibility, Musk, said, is based on an outrageous opinion article in the Santa Monica Observer, a site that favors the extreme right and said without any evidence that Mr. Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” Pelosi and his assailant were in underwear, or so the unfounded, out of thin air, conspiracy theory continues, which was quickly repeated and amplified in the blogosphere.
Steve Bannon, an advisor to trump, issued a “call to arms” for Republicans over election integrity concerns as officials sound the alarm on the risk of political violence during this year’s election cycle.
“There’s nobody coming to save us. You are the cavalry. Think back to the old John Ford westerns. You’re the cavalry,” said Bannon, who has been convicted of refusing to testify before Congress.”Right now in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — a call to arms. You’ve got to get to Frank Ryan. You’ve got to get into these counties.”
Another situation that will make your heads spin came in 2020, when the two candidates running for governor of Utah, Republican Spencer Cox and Democrat Chris Peterson, jointly filmed an ad in which they committed to respect and uphold democratic norms and a peaceful transition of power. How weird.
Republicans insist that Democrats are hardly the only ones to face political violence and threats. There were these instances:
In 2017, a gunman opened fire on a group of Republican lawmakers practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in an attack that wounded, and nearly killed, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La.
In June, a man was arrested for threatening to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after the armed man was nabbed near Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. That was followed in July when a man was charged with attempted assault after allegedly attacking Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., the GOP candidate in the New York gubernatorial contest, on stage during a campaign event.
That’s about the worst for violence against Republicans.
As for Democrats as victims, here’s a short list of victims of right wing, trump fueled violence:
* Following an inflammatory speech by trump on Jan. 6, 2021, hundreds of trump supporters stormed the Capitol, hoping to seize Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, as five people died and hundreds were injured including many police. Trump later blamed the unrest on the Democrats’ refusal to acknowledge alleged voter fraud while he lauded the insurrectionists as “peaceful people, these were great people.”
* David DePape, 42, was armed with a hammer and zip ties when he broke into the California home of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday, Oct. 28, and attacked her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer during a violent home invasion, while calling out “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” echoing the same words chanted by trump supporters while rampaging through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Pelosi, third in line to ascend to the presidency, is the number one member of congress targeted in GOP political ads, as Republicans have spent nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi. Mr. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture, as well as “serious injuries” to his hands and arm but is expected to make a full recovery. DePape has written numerous blog entries filled with racist, anti-Semitic, pro-trump and anti-Democrat posts.
* Days after the FBI search for apparently stolen, top secret documents at trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, Ricky Shiffer was armed and “ready for combat” when he tried to break into an F.B.I. office in Cincinnati and was later killed by law enforcement. The man had regularly posted on trump’s repugnant, Truth Social account.
* Joshua Hall, a 22-year-old Pennsylvania man, pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Rep. Erick Swalwell, D-Calif., a strong Pelosi supporter, and members of his family and his staffers. The man told Swalwell’s aides in a call on Aug. 29 that he had many AR-15 rifles and that he intended to come to the Capitol.
* In 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., tweeted a photoshopped video of him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., by slicing the back of her neck. The anti-immigrant clip also shows Gosar running across a European-style city alongside right wingers, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Color., and Rep. Greene. After a firestorm of protest, there was no apology from Gosar, who has attended a benefit with white nationalist and Holocaust denier, Nick Fuentes. Instead, Gosar accused Democrats of violating his right of free speech.
* The FBI arrested 13 far right militia members on Oct. 8, 2020, for planning to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., and to overthrow the government. Two pleaded guilty, two were acquitted, six others were found guilty.
* Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. was arrested in Florida on Oct. 26, 2019, and later pleaded guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison for sending 16 packages found to contain pipe bombs to Democratic Party politicians and other prominent critics of trump. Targets included former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros and actor Robert De Niro, among others.