What do you do when an 82-year-old man is attacked at his home with a hammer? You laugh about it, of course. A number of US Republican Party followers — people who like to preach to others about family values and civility — seem to find the attack on US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, very amusing.
For example, former US president Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, on Sunday last week posted a meme online showing a pair of underwear and a hammer next to the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”
The next day, the self-proclaimed “meme wars general” doubled down on his post, which referenced a baseless conspiracy theory about Pelosi, and posted another crude meme mocking the attack.
Either Trump Jr is capable of feeling shame or someone talked some sense into him. In any case, he has deleted those memes and replaced them with a message cynically politicizing the assault on Pelosi.
“Imagine how safe the country would be if democrats took all violent crime as seriously as they’re taking the Paul Pelosi situation,” he wrote. “They simply don’t care.”
Trump Jr can always be relied on to react to a situation in incredibly bad taste.
The only reason it is worth mentioning his disgusting comments is because he was not alone in mocking Pelosi. Far from it.
On Monday last week, US Republican Party candidate for governor of Arizona Kari Lake drew laughter at a campaign event with a joke about security at the Pelosi residence.
Republican Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin drew criticism from US Democratic Party followers after a comment he made while Pelosi was in hospital that appeared to make light of the attack.
On Monday last week, US Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, a Republican who represents a district in central New York, tweeted a picture of a group of men holding hammers for Halloween with the caption “LOL.”
Although not everyone on the right mocked the attack on Pelosi, some spread misinformation about it and some minimized it.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO, and self-proclaimed “Chief Twit” of Twitter, Elon Musk posted a link to a baseless conspiracy theory about Pelosi, then deleted it.
Meanwhile, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza wrote on Twitter: “The Left is going crazy because not only are we not BUYING the wacky, implausible Paul Pelosi story but we are even LAUGHING over how ridiculous it is.”
On Monday last week, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk called for an “amazing patriot” to bail out 42-year-old David DePape, who is accused of perpetrating the attack on Pelosi.
It is alarming that there could be an appetite on the right to turn DePape into the next Kyle Rittenhouse and make him a hero.
Despite the Republican reaction, it cannot be stressed how serious the attack on Pelosi was. If he had not managed to make a secret 911 call from the bathroom, Pelosi, who suffered skull injuries, might have fared a lot worse.
It has also been reported that DePape was looking for Nancy Pelosi, and was planning to hold her hostage and break her kneecaps because he saw her as “the leader of the pack” of lies told by the US Democratic Party.
There is nothing remotely funny about any of this. Republicans should be united in their condemnation of politically motivated violence and pledge to find ways to turn down the US’ political temperature.
Had a Republican politician been the subject of the attack, they would be demanding that Democrats do just that. There was more Republican outrage when the US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had his steak dinner interrupted by protesters than there was about the attack on Pelosi. There was certainly a lot more outrage when Kavanaugh was the subject of an unsuccessful assassination attempt earlier this year.
Kavanaugh has been brought up a lot by Republican politicians who are pushing the talking point that “both sides” are to blame for political violence.
For example, US Senator Tom Cotton condemned the attack on Pelosi, but also said: “You see deranged lunatics attack both Democrats and Republicans alike,” referring to the alleged attempt in June by 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske to assassinate Kavanaugh.
It is true that there are unhinged people across the political spectrum, and politicians from both sides have been targeted for violence.
However, “both-sidesing” this issue is dangerously dishonest. Both sides are not engaging in inflammatory rhetoric: That is the Republicans’ area of expertise. Both sides do not have a history of encouraging their supporters to storm the Capitol. Both sides are not pushing lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Both sides do not turn people such as Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two protesters, into folk heroes. Both sides do not glorify political violence. Both sides are not using an attack on an 82-year-old to generate laughter on the campaign trail.
The Republican reaction to the attack on Pelosi feels like a watershed moment in US politics. That so many people felt comfortable joking about the attack demonstrates the extent to which extremism has become accepted and political violence has been normalized. Pelosi might be on the road to recovery, but the US’ democracy is going down a very dark path.
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