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Nancy Pelosi (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
This afternoon, the Justice Department released the criminal complaint filed against David Wayne Depape, the man alleged to have assaulted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul on Saturday night. DePape is charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 115(a)(1)(A), Influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a Federal official by threatening or injuring a family member, and 18 U.S.C. § 1201(d), kidnapping.
It should not be surprising that an 82-year-old man being hit in the head with a hammer would occasion vitriol instead of condolences — we do live in disgusting times. But the wholesale adoption by the Republican party of a wild theory that Mr. Pelosi was attacked by a male prostitute was fucking gross.
“The internet remains undefeated,” the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., joked, retweeting an image of a pair of men’s briefs and hammer. “Also if you switch out the hammer for a red feather boa you could be Hunter Biden in an instant.” (Good thing young Deej is a family man and a teetotaler, AHEM.)
Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted an image of Speaker Pelosi covering her eyes, with the text “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser.” (He later deleted it.)
Even Twitter’s new wrecking ball in chief, Elon Musk, got in on the action.
Among the more politic wing of GOP, the reaction wasn’t much better, with RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel complaining about her party being blamed for fomenting violent rhetoric.
“This is what Democrat policies are bringing,” she whined on Fox, in an attempt to make it seem like the attack was the result of Democratic efforts to defund the police or some such.
But the criminal complaint tells another story entirely. DePape, a 42-year-old conspiracy theorist who lived in a garage and routinely spread right-wing and antisemitic hoaxes online, broke into the residence when Mr. Pelosi was asleep in bed. Upon being Mirandized, DePape freely admitted that he went to the home with zip ties, tape, rope, and a hammer “prepared to detain and injure Speaker Pelosi.”
DEPAPE stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DEPAPE the “truth,” he would let her go, and if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps.” DEPAPE was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth.” In the course of the interview, DEPAPE articulated he viewed Nancy as the “leader of the pack” of lies told by the Democratic Party. DEPAPE also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. DEPAPE also explained generally that he wanted to use Nancy to lure another individual to DEPAPE.
Mr. Pelosi managed to call 911, but DePape didn’t leave because, as he told the arresting officers, “much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender.” When the police arrived and told DePape to drop the hammer, he instead turned and beat Mr. Pelosi over the head with it.
Literally none of this has to do with “Violence and crime [being] rampant in Joe Biden’s America,” as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted. This is a crazy person who believed the rhetoric being spewed every day demonizing Speaker Pelosi as the leader of a criminal syndicate, routinely connected with not just fraud and Marxism (lol), but pedophilia and satanism.
FFS, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly fantasized about taking back the speaker’s gavel so he could beat Nancy Pelosi with it.
But, please, tell us how this is all because Democrats want to do away with cash bail and the death penalty. If only progressive prosecutors would crack down on BLM, this would never happen, right?
That’s sarcasm, of course. Because what else do we have left when a sizable portion of the electorate will continue to not only believe the lie about Pelosi being in a tryst with a prostitute, but will laugh about him getting his skull fractured as a deranged lunatic sought to kidnap his wife.
This country, man … I don’t know.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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