Friday’s brutal assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, at their San Francisco dwelling was overtly political — and a logical endpoint to the a long time of deeply private villainization Speaker Pelosi has weathered from her political opponents.
It’s now clear the speaker was the goal of Friday’s assault. The assailant broke into the house on the lookout for her, reportedly shouting, “Where is Nancy?” — echoing what insurrectionists referred to as out after they breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and saying that he would wait “until Nancy got home” as he tried to tie up Paul Pelosi. The speaker’s husband suffered a cranium fracture and severe accidents to his proper arm and arms that required surgical procedure after the assailant bludgeoned him with a hammer. (A spokesperson for the speaker stated in a assertion that Paul Pelosi is anticipated to make a full restoration.)
Republicans have dismissed any connection between their rhetoric and the assault. Instead, they’ve blamed Democratic insurance policies on crime and instructed that rising political violence could also be the results of basic nervousness round election legitimacy. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who was cheered by Republicans when he purchased Twitter final week, has superior a right-wing anti-LGBTQ conspiracy principle across the circumstances of the assault. Though he deleted his submit, it remained on Twitter lengthy sufficient to be amplified and repeated by many on the correct.
Even earlier than Pelosi grew to become speaker, Republicans within the social gathering and people adjoining to it have demonized her repeatedly, that includes her in assault adverts and lambasting her on Fox News. At least considered one of her colleagues within the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), has instantly indicated assist for violence towards her. And members of right-wing militia teams such because the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters have sought her assassination.
Police haven’t gone into additional element concerning the attacker’s motivations, however his Facebook posts on conspiracy theories round Covid-19 vaccines, the 2020 election, and the January 6 assault present a window into his radicalization. Other weblog posts underneath his title contained screeds towards minorities, politicians, girls, and international elites, and content material associated to QAnon — the false pro-Trump conspiracy principle {that a} cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, together with outstanding Democrats like Pelosi, are working the world.
None of these posts reference Pelosi particularly, however all of them intersect with the methods she has been a well-known goal of the correct — and never simply on the political fringes.
The lengthy historical past of Republicans demonizing Nancy Pelosi
Pelosi has been villainized by Republicans since she first ascended to Democratic management.
In 2003, inside days of her election as House Minority Leader, she shortly confronted gendered assaults from Republicans who have been, as Mark Z. Barabak wrote for the Los Angeles Times on the time: “eager to attack Pelosi as a loopy San Francisco liberal and exploit her city’s reputation as the odd-sock drawer of America. Within days, her face — garish and twisted — showed up in an attack ad slamming the Democrat in a Louisiana House race. (He won anyway.) She surfaced as Miss America, complete with tiara, in a spoof on Rush Limbaugh’s Web site.”
Such assaults continued all through her tenure as minority chief, together with through the 2006 election when Republicans ran a swath of assault adverts that includes unflattering photographs of Pelosi typically wanting indignant, bug-eyed, or startled. And they elevated in 2010, after she had turn out to be speaker. Republicans made her the face of their assaults on Democrats’ Affordable Care Act and launched a “Fire Pelosi” marketing campaign, which concerned a bus tour and pictures of Pelosi engulfed in flames.
Under the Trump period and within the years since, the assaults have solely escalated in tenor. Former President Donald Trump, who has remained silent concerning the assault on Paul Pelosi, shared doctored movies of the speaker designed to name into query her psychological health, retweeted accusations that she was “drinking booze on the job,” and had a litany of derogatory nicknames for her, amongst them “Crazy Nancy,” “Nervous Nancy,” and “Nancy Antoinette.”
Many of Trump’s followers echoed his rhetoric, on-line and in conservative media similar to Fox News. In 2021, Fox News host Mark Levin referred to as her “a nasty old bag — that’s what she is, a nasty, vicious, unhinged fool” who “has the hots for Trump” and “can’t get Trump out of her head.”
Rhetoric involving Pelosi has typically taken violent turns as properly. In 2018 and 2019, Taylor Greene repeatedly appeared to recommend assist for Pelosi’s execution, amongst that of different outstanding Democrats, liking a Facebook submit that stated “a bullet to the head” can be essentially the most expedient option to finish Pelosi’s speakership. Taylor Greene additionally claimed in a Facebook video that Pelosi was responsible of treason, noting “a crime punishable by death is what treason is.”
One candidate within the GOP major for Senate in Arizona this yr aired a Super Bowl advert that featured him dressed as sheriff taking pictures down an actor taking part in Pelosi, recognized as “Crazy Face Pelosi,” after he says, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you.” In the interval since Labor Day, Republicans have reportedly since spent almost $40 million on adverts that point out Pelosi.
Last week, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Emmer (R-MN) posted a video of himself firing a gun with the hashtag #FirePelosi. And even on Friday, simply hours after the assault, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin linked the assault on Pelosi’s husband to the November election, drawing condemnation from Democrats who referred to as the feedback insensitive.
“There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send [Pelosi] back to be with him in California,” Youngkin stated at a marketing campaign rally in Stafford for GOP congressional candidate Yesli Vega.
Fox News anchors have additionally tried to tie the assault to Republicans’ message on crime within the midterms. “This can happen anywhere. Crime is random and that’s why it’s such a significant part of this election story,” Fox anchor Bill Hemmer stated on air Friday. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel echoed that speaking level on Fox News Sunday, saying, “If this weren’t Paul Pelosi, this criminal would probably be out on the street tomorrow … This is what Democrat policies are bringing.”
Other Republicans — together with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, chair of the GOP’s Senate marketing campaign arm — denounced the assault, however argued towards Republicans having a key function in fomenting the conspiracy theories of the attacker. Scott appeared to recommend the assault was rooted in a basic lack of public confidence in elections.
“I think what we have to do is, one, we have to condemn the violence, and then we have to do everything we can to get people — make sure people feel comfortable about these elections,” he stated Sunday on CNN.
The vilification of Pelosi has taken a fair uglier kind in extremely right-wing circles on-line. Conspiracy theories just like the one shared by Musk abound, and even Republican members of Congress are spreading misinformation:
Some on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social have additionally been overtly celebrating the assault, with the hashtag #PelosiCrimeHousehold trending over the weekend.
Arguably the present venom aimed toward Pelosi wouldn’t exist with out the a long time of Republican vitriol towards her. President Joe Biden made that connection express at a fundraising dinner Friday in Philadelphia, saying that political violence is the pure end result of the form of rhetoric that Republicans have enabled. “What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?” he requested.
Misogyny, anti-elitism, and anti-democratic concepts function closely in assaults on Pelosi
As the primary feminine speaker of the House, and one serving at a time of accelerating political polarization and anti-democratic violence, Pelosi has confronted uniquely intense assaults which have channeled right-wing anger about her gender, wealth, and pro-democratic rhetoric.
Even when she first ran for Congress, Republicans sought to painting her as unserious, a “liberal dilettante” and “airhead” — insults that ring of sexism.
In 2007, conservative discuss radio host Rush Limbaugh mocked her election to the speakership: “This is a triumph of feminism and estrogen. … And ladies, the long 200-year national nightmare without a woman at the top is now over.” In 2009, Democrats accused Republicans of advancing antiquated attitudes towards girls after they ran an advert suggesting that Pelosi ought to be put “in her place” on the difficulty of Afghanistan. And in 2014, a Republican member instructed that she “might want to try” doing her analysis on the border, feedback that her Democratic colleagues took to be patronizing and sexist.
Pelosi doesn’t speak about her gender a lot, however once in a while has identified the disparate remedy and distinctive assaults she’s confronted as a girl in congressional management. For occasion, amid questions in 2014 about her age and whether or not she ought to hand the mantle to a successor, she retorted that then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s simply two years youthful than her, ought to be fielding comparable questions. And in 2018, after being demonized by Trump and the GOP and nonetheless successful the speakership, she instructed CNBC, “I don’t want women to think if you get attacked, you run away.”
The assaults towards Pelosi over time have additionally centered on her wealth. On the correct, there have lengthy been harsh critiques of “elites,” typically stoked by Fox News; more and more, as my colleague Andrew Prokop lately defined, influential members of the correct argue an “elite left ‘ruling class’ has captured and is ruining America, and that drastic measures are necessary to fight back against them.”
For many — together with one January 6 rioter and recruiter for the antigovernment motion The Three Percenters — Pelosi is the face of that “evil” ruling class. And she’s typically been attacked as considered one of that class’s most hypocritical members. She’s confronted criticism for initially dismissing the concept that members of Congress and their relations shouldn’t be allowed to commerce shares, although they’ve entry to confidential intelligence.
It’s a critique that was notably intense given she is among the richest members of Congress, with an estimated internet price of at the very least $46 million, and that fortune has grown partly due to profitable trades by Paul Pelosi, a enterprise capitalist. She later endorsed legislation that may make it tougher for members of Congress to make use of data they obtain on the job for their very own monetary acquire, nevertheless it at present appears unlikely to go.
Ironically, Trump attacked Pelosi for her wealth and elite standing plenty of occasions; maybe most notably, he sought to make use of her wealth to painting her as out of contact in a 2020 marketing campaign advert ridiculing her costly fridge crammed with ice cream whereas Americans have been going hungry through the Covid-related financial downturn.
Both the sexist and anti-elite traces of assault have instantly fed into the anti-democratic assaults which have lately overshadowed the remaining. She was a prime goal through the January 6 riot, when the mob tore aside her workplace, calling out her title and looking for her. Rioters, emboldened by Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, left little doubt as to what they might have finished to her: “We did our part. We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the frickin’ brain. But we didn’t find her,” one girl stated in a selfie video.
After the riot was put down, Pelosi declared that “democracy won.” But it’s clear that pro-Trump extremists like the person who broke into her home Friday aren’t keen to surrender the battle.
Update, October 31, 2022, 1:40 pm ET: This story, initially revealed on October 29, has been up to date to replicate Republicans’ newest responses to the assault and the unfold of conspiracy theories associated to the incident.