The news media simply decided over the weekend that the attack against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband was politically-motivated, and they knew just who and what were to blame: Republicans and their rhetoric, as always. To be crystal clear, the assault was very disturbing, for reasons chillingly laid out in yesterday's federal charging documents. The perpetrator should be harshly punished, and everyone should hope for a speedy and complete recovery for the victim. We now know that the house was targeted because the alleged assailant wanted to kidnap and harm Nancy Pelosi, whom he called a partisan liar to police. He also claimed he wanted to use her detention to "lure" someone else, whatever that means. Whether that combination of factors, added to the information below, qualifies the crime as explicitly political in nature is up for debate. But even if an undeniable fact pattern traces the suspect's motives to some twisted and deluded agenda associated with the fringe political Right, that does not make anyone else responsible his actions. I've been very consistent on this point, and it cuts both ways.
To put an even finer point on it, Republicans campaigning against Pelosi and her party with standard-issue slogans ("fire Pelosi," etc) and critiques are not culpable for the deranged actions of some psycho with a hammer. The rush to fully embrace that narrative -- with which the news media also embarrassed and discredited itself after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting -- is further evidence of the media's activism and corruption. For days, amid a dearth of solid information, headline after headline presupposed a right-wing or Republican-aligned political motive or connection, with news anchors browbeating Republicans over their supposed complicity, and cable news programming leaning into "political violence" hand-wringing. All of this has unfolded before any hard evidence emerged that the incident was remotely related to politics. But that didn't stop members of the press from doing what they do. It's surreal and maddening:
So we’re just skipping the part where we ascertain whether or not this actually was political violence at all? Let alone “right wing.” Look— it very well might be! There are some counter-indications too. We don’t know yet… pic.twitter.com/RJXXJiogaP
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 30, 2022
…But now they’re stampeding to their usual “right wing rhetoric” activism that they deploy even when the facts don’t fit the narrative. Very different rules apply when it’s the journos’ own (lefty) tribe that is implicated. It’s so transparently political & irresponsible…
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 30, 2022
Certain episodes of political violence — even when some wind up not actually being political violence — are treated as an emergency to many journalists, generally when an incident is useful in stifling and demonizing politicians and others those journalists dislike. Too often, it’s literally that simple; lazy, knee-jerk tribalism over journalism. Other (less narrative-friendly and therefore politically inconvenient) political violence just doesn’t matter as much to them. That's blunt but accurate. It's true that the Pelosi suspect's virtual footprint appears to include some ranting about January 6th and COVID vaccines. He was also locally known as a nudist protester who lives in a hippie commune festooned with every left-wing slogan imaginable, and who has railed against Christianity (while alternatively believing himself to be Jesus Christ). Acquaintances say his shifting and incoherent politics had been mostly left-wing in the past, but it generally sounds like he's just deeply mentally ill, in a non-ideologically-conforming sort of way. This reads like a grab-bag of crazy:
NEW: The ex-girlfriend of David DePape, the suspect in the Paul Pelosi attack, says that mental illness and drug use caused him to deteriorate so profoundly that he grew convinced that “he was Jesus for a year.” https://t.co/P7v8HVjFcy
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) October 31, 2022
A California state Senator knows who this guy is and is aware of a long history? https://t.co/W7phTosHub pic.twitter.com/0fmFmShsKM
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 31, 2022
FBI visits Berkeley home tied to Pelosi beating suspect. The Victorian is dubbed a “hippie collective” by neighbors pic.twitter.com/jOhbVTvElx
— Jaxon Van Derbeken (@jvanderbeken) October 28, 2022
And, as I discovered yesterday, DePape lived with a notorious local nudist in a Berkeley home, complete with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree. pic.twitter.com/qxNvgWXSaG
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 29, 2022
Man who violently attacked Paul Pelosi wrote on a blog last week that “an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird” https://t.co/MKNNBO3Slq
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) October 30, 2022
I am obviously not arguing that this guy was actually a leftist, and so leftists should be blamed. That would be irresponsible and unfair. But 'irresponsible and unfair' characterized the reflexive, blanket, zealous coverage undertaken by our news media after the initial news broke. Gathering the particulars was secondary. The partisan blame-fest, especially so close to a national election, was paramount. Some of the utterly bizarre initial reported details about the crime (an assailant in his underwear, a mysterious third party answering the door when police arrived) have been clarified or debunked. Other elements of the timeline are still a bit strange. Of course, crimes involving raving lunatics are likely to be strange. Ethically, it's usually a good rule of thumb to wait for facts to come in before leaping to political conclusions. And in terms of fairness, even if the facts look bad for one 'side,' it's also a good rule of thumb not to tar half the country, or one of the major political parties, as complicit. Yet the news media selectively rejects these best practices, for political and ideological reasons, over and over again.
Indeed, as I mentioned yesterday, just last week, members of the journo class were excoriating Marco Rubio for denouncing a vicious assault against a Republican canvasser in Florida. The victim told authorities that his attackers bea him savagely because of his politics (he was wearing GOP gear). We've seen conservative volunteers and campaign workers assaulted and shot in multiple incidents across the country, which has strangely not sparked a 'national conversation' about the Left's incendiary rhetoric. Such things never do. Wrong perpetrators, wrong victims. Sure, there will be some perfunctory coverage, virtually none of it accusatory or point-scoring, then it's very quickly on to the next thing. Relatedly, I'll leave you with this:
This piece, in hindsight, is AMAZING.
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) October 31, 2022
Basically, the article was like "Oh, political violence is no big deal, that is why we aren't reporting on the Kavanaugh attempted assassination."
I KID YOU NOT. https://t.co/7lMYZlSklw
Remember, within days of that murder plot getting broken up, it was no longer national news. Hell, it was barely treated as such the day after the would-be assassin was arrested. Also, I'll just leave this here. Pelosi's assailant was, reportedly, a man familiar to at least one local politician, with a significant rap sheet, who was in the country illegally, living in and around an infamous sanctuary city:
NEW: Per ICE source, David DePape, the suspect accused of beating Paul Pelosi in his home with a hammer after breaking in, is currently in the U.S. illegally as a “longtime” visa overstay. @FoxNews
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 31, 2022
