Around the same time on Friday, as the world watched video of QAnon believers slamming an unconscious Paul Pelosi with a hammer, Republican National Committee Chairman Rona McDaniel told delegates gathered in Orange County, Why are they meeting in deep blue California.
Because, McDaniel said, “I just wanted to wipe Nancy Pelosi’s face with it one more time.”
McDaniel, who was re-elected Friday, is talking up Republicans winning back the House last fall. Yet by continuing to demonize the former Democratic House speaker, she’s not just cementing the cause of David DePape — a loner living in a Richmond garage — who allegedly stormed Pelosi’s Pacific Heights in the middle of the night. House looking for speakers.
She made sure there would be more followers behind him.
McDaniel’s quip underscores that, no matter the cost, many Republicans simply cannot help themselves when it comes to denigrating Nanny Pelosi and other Democrats. Even on a day when the world watched an endless cycle of beatings on an octogenarian, McDaniel didn’t have the discipline or decency to stop it.
DePape told investigators he was going to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage, and if she didn’t admit to the “lies” she said about a stolen election (that they weren’t stolen), “I’d interrupt her calf.”
Instead, DePape found her husband, Paul.
That’s the video the world finally saw on Friday. A deranged man affected by hate, violent speech and an unsuspecting 82-year-old was beaten unconscious after police arrived.
The video’s stills don’t just reveal the chaotic, bizarre scene of the night. They are a microcosm of how broken America is.
They illustrate how political violence in the United States is escalating every day. How the partisan divide in America is growing. How these differences pit Americans against each other. And die without repentance. And disbelieve anything we see that doesn’t quite agree with our point of view, even if we see it in a graphics video.
“What about the evidence of breaking and entering?” said criminal defense Brian Claypool friday fox news After the video is posted. The host said there was video of DePape smashing glass.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” Claypool said.
“It’s on the screen right now,” the host said as a video of DePape’s entry flashed by.
“Maybe that’s true, maybe I’m wrong,” Claypool said. Then he turned quickly to ask: “What is (the Justice Department) doing?”
For many Americans, seeing is believing.
A year after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that killed five people and injured 138 law enforcement officers, only four in 10 Republicans recall the attack as “extremely violent,” AP NORC reported. Or the Center for Public Affairs Research survey on “extreme violence.”
This is not the impression of those who were beaten by the mob.
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Jon Cherry/Getty Images, MBR/TNS“It’s like a medieval battle,” Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell told the committee on Jan. 6. The insurgents doused him with chemicals and beat him with a pole with an American flag hanging from it.
However, three in 10 survey respondents said it was not violent.
They’re swallowing a lot of the disinformation circulating online about the Paul Pelosi attack. It’s not a Twitter user with 12 followers who is shoveling trash. It was being spread by everyone from Trump to Twitter CEO and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who shared anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories about the attack. Within hours, Musk’s tweet was retweeted more than 30,000 times, liked more than 110,000 times, and was deleted less than an hour later.
As my Chronicle colleague Shira Stein reported Friday, the release of the video of the attack has not silenced conspiracy theorists. It inspires new ideas.
It’s this misinformation that breeds people like DePape. What drove him to get in trouble with Paul Pelosi.
It would be a mistake to see DePape as an outlier, someone launching an online screed from his lonely garage to a non-existent audience.
His blog is filled with far-right conspiracy theories, QAnon insanity, and racist and anti-LGBTQ nonsense. In the weeks before the attack, he created posts titled “Communist Voodoo Science,” “Feminist Owned,” and “Awakened Are Guilty Racists.” His ex-girlfriend told The Chronicle last year that he was mentally ill.
“I told him I’m not going to surrender, I’m here to fight,” DuPape told investigators in a video of the interrogation released Friday. “It’s like, if you stop me from doing evil, you will take the punishment in my place.”
He is not alone. And here’s the scary part.
According to a national survey by researchers at the University of California, one in five Americans believes that violence can at least sometimes be justified “to advance an important political goal,” and half believe civil war is imminent “in the next few years.” Outbreak Davis’ last year’s Violence Prevention Research Program.
The survey found that nearly 19 percent of respondents strongly or very strongly agreed with the statement “If elected leaders do not protect American democracy, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violence.” Meanwhile, about 16 percent said the same about the statement “Our American way of life is rapidly disappearing, and we may have to use force to save it.”
If more and more people are turning to violence to support their political views, the video that emerged Friday will be no different.
Joe Garofoli is a senior political writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
