Like Robert Hubbell, I have been perplexed about the statements on news stories that police are trying to identify the motive of the man who broke into the Pelosi home, shouting “Where’s Nancy?” and attacked her husband.
Rightwing media and prominent figures such as Don Trump Jr. have spread lies (amplified by Elon Musk), but the law authorities know what happened and they are charging the assailant with a long list of felonies.
I’m not putting the quote into italics so that you can see Hubbell’s use of italics.
Hubbell writes:
The attempted assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi has struck at the heart of America’s political dysfunction and mass delusion. Major media outlets are going out of their way to caution that “the assailant’s motives are unknown” and limiting their description of what occurred to “an attack on Paul Pelosi” without acknowledging that the intended target was the person third-in-line for the presidency of the US. Right-wing media is in full conspiracy mode, trafficking in wild and baseless claims that are insulting, defamatory, and offensive to a grieving family and a severely wounded victim. Elon Musk inflamed the situation by tweeting and deleting a bogus “opinion” article from a media outlet known for peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, e.g., that Hillary Clinton died before the 2016 election and her “body double” debated Trump.
At a time when the focus should be on the recovery of the victim, the safety of Speaker Pelosi, and the hate speech that provoked the attack, the media seems to be talking about nearly everything and anything else. It is maddening and sickening.
First, as to the attack on Paul Pelosi: The assailant illegally entered the Pelosi home armed with a hammer, zip ties, duct tape, and a “list of people he wanted to target.” The assailant, David Depape, found Paul Pelosi asleep in an upstairs bedroom and confronted him, demanding to know “Where’s Nancy?” Paul Pelosi engaged the unknown intruder in conversation and managed to surreptitiously dial 9-1-1. Pelosi kept the line open so an operator could hear the exchange in which Paul Pelosi signaled that the was in peril without saying those words—to avoid provoking Depape. Pelosi’s strategy worked, giving police enough time to arrive and capture Depape as he and Pelosi were struggling to gain control over Depape’s hammer.
Second, erroneous reporting by a local Fox News affiliate in San Francisco included details that were later retracted—but not before the falsehoods spread like wildfire on Twitter. A right-wing website in Santa Monica that frequently publishes falsehoods ran an “opinion” piece on Saturday that was clearly labeled as opinion (using the abbreviation IMHO—”in my humble opinion”). The author “opined” a wild scenario that I won’t describe (although Washington Post and New York Timesrepeated it in detail). Key details of the “opinion” piece were later explicitly refuted by prosecutors in San Francisco. For clarity, Depape illegally entered the Pelosi home with a list of “targets” and a hammer, duct tape, and zip ties. Depape was not previously known to Paul Pelosi, who was asleep in an upstairs room when Depape broke into the house. And reporting by the Fox affiliate about the state of dress of the assailant was later retracted.
Third, many right-wing disinformation specialists immediately began claiming that the attack was a “false flag” operation designed to affect the midterms.
Finally, Elon Musk then tweeted a link to the baseless “opinion” piece that speculated about what “might” have happened preceding the break-in. Musk deleted the tweet shortly thereafter, but not before it was exposed to his 120 million followers. The damage was done. No amount of truth-telling or retractions by reckless Fox affiliates will overcome the momentum created by Musk’s tweet. See NYTimes, Elon Musk, in a Tweet, Shares Link From Site Known to Publish False News and WaPo, Paul Pelosi attack prompts Elon Musk and political right to spread misinformation.
In short order, Elon Musk and a reckless Fox affiliate converted a near-miss national tragedy into a cesspool of disinformation and delusion. In the process, the Pelosi family is being subjected to a second trauma that may be greater than the original assassination attempt and injuries suffered by Paul Pelosi.
It is vital that we speak the truth about the cause and nature of the attack.
As to the cause, there is a direct line between the hate speech and coded incitement to violence that has become accepted in the Republican Party. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that Speaker Pelosi had committed a crime “punishable by death”—a tweet greeted by a collective yawn by GOP leadership in the House. But the dog whistle attacks on Speaker Pelosi have been occurring for decades. See Vox, Republicans demonized Nancy Pelosi long before the attack on her husband.
Max Boot has it right in this essay in WaPo, Don’t blame ‘both sides.’ The right is driving political violence. Boot writes,
There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of Trump. The former president and his followers use violent rhetoric of extremes: Trump calls President Biden an “enemy of the state,” attacks the FBI as “monsters,” refers to the “now Communist USA” and even wrote that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has expressed support for executing Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats.
As to the nature of the attack, major media outlets are missing the point. In the main, the incident is being described as “an assault on Paul Pelosi.” That description is true, but misleading. Depape was not looking for Paul Pelosi, but for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The fact that Nancy Pelosi was not home at the time does not change the essential nature of the attack or its intended victim, which makes it an attempted assassination. Why major media outlets seem to be minimizing the true nature of the crime is puzzling. Indeed, as many readers noted, the NYTimes reported the incident “below the fold” in its Saturday edition. Would the same low-key coverage have been given if the intended victim was a former president whose spouse was savagely beaten when the assailant could not find the former president after breaking into their home?
Also puzzling is the extraordinary caution of media outlets that make the point that Depape’s “motives are unknown.” Really? Journalists spend all day every day speculating about the outcome of the 2022 election, but they are unable to make a reasonable inference that Depape was looking to assassinate Nancy Pelosi given that he broke into her home, was calling “Where’s Nancy?”, and was armed with a hammer, duct tape, and zip ties? Oh, and there’s the fact that he posted conspiracy theories about 2020 election and the January 6thattack.
I believe Nancy Pelosi is, sadly, the only Speaker of the House to have survived two assasination attempts.
Maybe the media is afraid of focusing on this awful truth.
Does anyone still expect a huge, unexpected number of women voters to add sanity to next Tuesday’s election results?
Good question, Joe.
Not sure what to think.
No
I don’t trust polls. Ignore them.
I hope you are right.
Polls discourage voters. Either they think their candidate is so far ahead in the polls or so far behind, that it seems like a waste of time tto vote.
Several years ago, Mike Bloomberg spread the word that he had a commanding lead in the polls. 10-12%.
He won by 1%.
How many voters for Bill Thomson stayed home because of the polls, which were wrong.
The five kinds of lies: lies , SomeDAM lies, statistics, DeSantis and polls.
Or Bloomberg voters. But I get your point. There have been some Republican Polls with ridiculous sampling
Why are right wing media still searching for a motive?
IT’S IN THE PLAYBOOK!
Create doubt.
Spew “What if’s.”
Select words from statements that are not 100% definitive – ex. Police reported the attacker “most likely” entered…
Tweet gross hypotheticals.
Drag out the story until it is no longer a story
and
Because they are mean people who will attack anyone in a position of bona fide respect, honor, or position as the cause for their problems
Number 1: Paul Pelosi sure stayed cool under tremendous pressure. Not bad for someone at any age but, wow, this guy is 82.
Number 2: Cheapskate that I am, I watch free TV over the air from Scranton, PA. So my evenings lately are carpet bombed with political ads, a good proportion attacking any Democrat who has ever said “hello” to Nancy Pelosi. She’s got an iron backbone, that’s for sure. Talk about a target on someone’s back.
Number 3: And, I sit there wondering in front of the TV….the unflattering images of Nancy Pelosi used for the attack ads…does the opposition dig so deep and in the same way to slime the men who are running for office? Or, is this the old double standard at work again? (I’m imagining an ad that zooms in on Trump’s big, fat, vein-ridden butt….but, NO, I can’t go there. Lunchtime is approaching.)
Back, before 2016, I planned a unit for my 8th grade U.S. history students that focused on the Kennedy assassination and conspiracy theories. One of the objectives was to work with the students about how to find the truth amidst all the nonsense out there.
Little did I know the tsunami of conspiracy crapola that was headed our way, once Trump took office.
But, you know, once again, Trump and his ilk are tapping into a force that was already there. Milking it and enlarging it, exponentially via the power of the internet.
Hence, this search for motives about the Pelosi attack -motives that don’t exist.
As I was planning the 8th grade unit during that late spring of 2016, I remember sitting on my front porch, talking with my daughter who was a middle school student at the time. I was trying to find out if my idea for a unit would interest 8th graders. I asked her about what she knew about conspiracy theories, and I was floored by the scope of zany ideas she could rattle of, things she’d heard or read. We laughed at the time.
I’m sure not laughing now.
A friend of mine did a paper on the Kennedy assassination when he was in College or High school. Now he engages the most dramatic of the steal Conspiracy theories like a preacher engages the collection plates.
Do you think some voters might be turned off by ads demonizing and attacking Nancy Pelosi now? Not the true believers — what she who must not be named CORRECTLY identified as the deplorables who LIKED Trump’s appeal to racism and xenophobia and violence.
But I am talking about the independent voters in PA – especially the women – who might now look at those ads with more skepticism.
Fascists embrace political violence. I think we’re in for some extremely rough times ahead.
I don’t remember the media source I read, but what I read a day or two after the failed assassination attempt went into detail providing evidence (his online social media profile) that revealed who the MAGA RINO behind the failed attempt was, and it was clear from that evidence that he was and may still be a mentally deranged MAGA RINO. Then earlier today, I read that the failed assassin has already debunked all the conspiracy theories by admitting to the police what he wanted to do.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/police-say-paul-pelosi-suspect-wanted-to-hold-house-speaker-hostage
But as long as the MAGA RINO voters only get their fake news from FOX and continue to distrust the real news media, they will willingly continue to be ignorant of reality.
Lloyd, RINO means “Republican in name only.” It’s used by folks like Trump of Republicans whom he thinks vote too much like Democrats.
First, I couldn’t care less about speculation when there are few facts available. You easily accuse others of that offense while doing so yourself. How do you know what the alleged assailant was shouting? Are you not curious about the amazing lack of security at such an important location? What kind of burglar/assailant says sure, we’ll take a timeout while you use the bathroom?
Look, people on both sides can provide examples from the other side claiming that they are provoking violence (see, Schumer on the steps of the Supreme Court, Maxine Waters, Trump, etc, etc.). Somehow this has become OK for one’s own side but the end of “our democracy” for the other side. It’s all just politics, politics is a rough sport, if you can’t take the he heat… they say. Bullshit I say. It’s time to reject the continued slide from principled opponents to blood enemies in politics. We all need to demand better.
My father was a professor of political science. At his funeral his best friend and member of the same department (but a different party) spoke. He reinforced the idea that people can have differing opinions on some subjects and still be friends and warned of the outcomes of where we are headed. I fear his darkest predictions are coming true.
You cannot possibly be suggesting that those who suggest conspiracy at every turn should receive the same respect regarding the truth than those who look at factual information.
Curiously, it seems that “conspiracy theorists” and “those who look at factual information” are often deemed so by individual’s opinions rather than objective facts. I seem to recall a president as well as a news anchor saying on television that if you take the vaccine you will not get the disease and you cannot spread the disease (these clips are readily findable on the net). Those who disagreed were labeled conspiracy theorists and banned from social media, yet it turns out that they were the ones providing factual information.
So, whom do you believe? The police on the scene who witnessed the attack or the QAnon gossip?
And by the way, the death rate for unvaccinated people is far higher than for those who were vaccinated.
I don’t know who or what Qanon is. I’ve never met anyone who identifies as a member of said group, so I certainly don’t listen to gossip from them. I said nothing about death rates; I only restated objective facts about what our president said and the reality that those who disagreed with him were called conspiracy theorists.
Dawn confuses two different things:
A Democrat who MISSPEAKS and who CORRECTS the words he misspoke – often at the very same event and ALWAYS within a day or two.
A Republican who didn’t misspeak but LIED, and continues to tell the same lies for as long as it is necessary to get people like Dawn to condone and excuse their violent actions. And then doubles down on their lies, as ALL the Republicans are doing about January 6 and the 2020 election. Remember, the few Republicans who won’t spew those lies to justify the violence committed by their fellow Trump supporters against Capitol police and Nancy Pelosi are excommunicated from the Republican party.
“people can have differing opinions on some subjects and still be friends and warned of the outcomes of where we are headed. I fear his darkest predictions are coming true.”
Dawn absolutely confuses what her father’s best friend said and she didn’t notice that her father’s friend said SOME subjects. Because unless her father’s friend is evil, I doubt her father’s friend believes that “people can have differing opinions” when the subject is whether a right wing Republican should be allowed to break into his next door neighbor’s house and murder his neighbor’s entire family because the family is Jewish and his “opinion” from right wing propaganda is that all Jews are dangerous and killing them will protect the white Christian way of life.
I doubt that Dawn’s father’s friend would say that we should all respect that person’s “opinion” that killing the Jewish family was a good thing. I doubt that anyone who isn’t evil would lecture us about how we need to remain friends with people whose “opinion” is that Jews are the source of all evil because those people just have a “different opinion”.
Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would be absolutely fine with that. Dawn seems to believe that as long as Trump has an “opinion” that shooting someone on Fifth Avenue is a good thing, that opinion must be respected.
But I doubt her father’s friend would like his words to be twisted by someone who believes an opinion based on lies and hate should be respected just as much as an opinion based on truth.
What kind of person would say that “we need to respect Hitler’s opinion”? “We need to respect Saddam Hussein’s opinion?” We need to respect Osama bin laden’s “opinion”?
Dawn, some things are bad, and condoning Republican lies that promote violence because you know the violence won’t be directed at you and you hate the same people they do makes you complicit with the violence.
And I bet your father’s friend would agree.
Opinions based on lies that demonize the “other” are not opinions that should be excused when they cause violence.
I think your father’s friend knows that, Dawn, but if he doesn’t, that speaks for itself.
Wow, I think our right wing trolls revealed himself.
First he is “Dawn”. Then he is “David Gere”.
David Gere — aka “Dawn” – is a right wing troll.
David Gere — aka “Dawn” – is telling us to believe a lie — that a misstatement by Biden that Biden corrected in the same speech and did not repeat over and over again is exactly the same as Republicans doubling down on lies to anger folks and get them to act out violently against Democrats or Jews or gay people or whatever handy scapegoat they find to distract them from the fact that that the Republicans just cut their Social Security, Medicare, wages, and any program that doesn’t benefit the rich.
NYC PSP,
I was about to correct you, but I checked the comments and “Dawn” and “David Gere” have the same email address.
Yes, I am married
“What kind of burglar/assailant says sure, we’ll take a timeout while you use the bathroom?”
The one that doesn’t want to get pissed on when the diuretics hit.
Dawn, that Pelosi was able to talk to this guy is not surprising. The guy was totally deranged. He was not a burglar. According to reports, he was a MAGA nutcase. He was there to do damage to Nancy Pelosi, who, fortunately, was not home. Is it peculiar that Pelosi was able to go to the bathroom? Yes. He was dealing with an insane person whose plan wasn’t working out. He was trying to talk the guy down. He kept his wits about him and found a way to get to a phone and call the police.
Don’t expect insane people to react rationally. That’s not sensible. BTW, this guy was so insane that he hit Pelosi with the hammer IN FRONT OF THE POLICE WHO HAD SHOWN UP BECAUSE OF PELOSI’S CALL.
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
Fascists use violence. Putin used to get rid of his enemies by having them shot or by poisoning them with nerve gas. Then, for a while, he was throwing them out of windows. Now, they are having unfortunate falls. Right now, the Fascist Party in the U.S. encourages violence but maintains a bit of plausible deniability (see, for example, Trump, 147 U.S. Republican Senators and Representatives, and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th). But when the U.S. Fascists seize all the reins of power–the Extreme Court, the two houses of Congress, and the Presidency–as it looks like they soon will, they will turn to outright violence, putting the SA in USA. Look at the leaders of this party now. Do you have any doubt that they will? I don’t. They will turn to violence with relish, finally able to do what they have wanted to do for so long.
I fear that we may soon be thinking, yes, Trump was a disgusting human, a traitor and predator and career criminal, but he had the redeeming quality of being incompetent and incapable of carrying out the violence that he dreamed of. UNLIKE THE ONEIN OFFICE NOW. Come 2025, that seems quite likely.
Just when you think that the Repugnican Limbo Party has gotten as low as it can get, . . .
And a little bit lower now, and a little bit lower now, . . .
“The wholething is crazy. I mean, if there’s even a little bit of truth to what’s been said…”
Putin Puppet Trump with Wolf Blitzer
“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story…”
Putin puppet Elon Musk on Kremlin Twitter
Two lapdogs of fascist Vlad sowing doubt about reality by reinforcing the master’s lies and disinformation.
I wonder what country all the dark money propping up the traitor party is coming from?