An update on a story we highlighted on Monday, which the media covered with far less vigor and volume than they would have if the partisan roles had been reversed. In case you missed it -- and you very well may have -- a man plowed his van into a GOP voter registration tent in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday, narrowly missing a volunteer and flipping off the Trump supporters he targeted before driving off. The suspect was arrested within hours and identified as a 27-year-old man who worked in theater tech. Authorities were careful not to automatically assign a political motive to the assault, but I reasoned that the facts all pointed in one direction:
The investigation is still underway, and authorities have said they're not yet able to confirm that the vehicular assault was politically-motivated. We should wait for additional information, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. The attack was directed at an explicitly partisan political target, including a red tent covered in Trump signs. Based on witness accounts, the driver seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and conveyed his anger at the GOP volunteers beyond attempting to mow them down...He rammed is van into the voter registration setup, then exited his vehicle to take a video recording of the chaos, and gave the Republicans the middle finger before screeching away. What happened here doesn't seem like a great mystery.
And now, via the police report, we have evidence of the obvious (content warning):
The attack on a Florida GOP voter registration tent was motivated by...exactly what you'd expect. From the police report: pic.twitter.com/xy1JhnYVXA
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 12, 2020
The man who is accused of deliberately driving his van into a tent where voters were being registered by local Republicans told the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office his disapproval of President Donald Trump was a motivating factor, according to an unredacted arrest report obtained by News4Jax...The suspect told investigators he does not like President Trump and that was part of the reason he wanted to run over the tent, according to the arrest report.
The assailant hates Donald Trump, wanted to "take a stand" to that effect, and only seemed regretful that the video he made of his attack missed "the good part," -- i.e., the attack itself. This man was radicalized by partisan hatred and committed a violent crime to express his rage. He's also lying about what happened, in an effort to save his skin:
Timm told investigators he saw the registration tent after he went to pick up food and cigarettes at Walmart, according to JSO...Timm said he waited until there were no people in front of the tent before he ran it over although, JSO investigators noted in the report, the video showed people still standing there.
I'll once again assert with great confidence that if he'd been a red hat-sporting pickup-driving MAGA dude, this would be a large national firestorm. It appears as though the New York Times didn't even bother to assign one of its own reporters to the story, which was covered through this strange prism by Politico. And while local Democrats stepped up to harshly condemn the assault, I haven't been able to find a single quote from a major national Democrat on the matter. I seriously doubt anyone has bothered to ask them.
Oddly, no panic about rhetoric has materialized, nor have pointed questions about now harsh anti-Trump (and anti-Trump supporter) words might be stoking the flames of dangerous anger. We're not debating what constitutes "incitement." Also absent are ubiquitous lectures about angry white men, even though that description matches the suspect to a tee. Weird. I explicitly do not seek to blame political speech or one 'side' for horrible spasms of violence, but the media double standard is glaring. I'll leave you with the sound of an inconvenient incident disappearing down the MSM memory hole. Farewell, sweet narrative-buster:
SOUND ON: What sound is made when you drop a nine-inch ice core—a sample of ice drilled from a glacier—down a 450-foot deep hole in Antarctica? Turns out it's something like a series of cartoon ricochets! https://t.co/Gq3izsi5b1 pic.twitter.com/0vkcqQZCY1
— ABC News (@ABC) February 11, 2020