On Aug. 2, 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is quoted as saying that it “will be hard not to hit” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel if he becomes the Republican House Majority Leader after the November elections.
On Oct. 28, 2022, David DePape broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and brutally attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, while shouting, “Where’s Nancy?”
I am struck (pun intended) by the parallels. McCarthy is a staunch Trump supporter. So is DePape, who is also a QAnon believer. For both, their target is a woman, a woman in power who does not agree with them. Just as with the men who were recently found guilty of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, resorting to violence and breaking the law to attack a progressive woman in power is okay?
Where does that message come from? When the House Minority Leader, however jokingly (wink, wink) advocates violence against progressive women in power, there should be no surprise at the trickle down. This conservative movement does not tolerate differences, especially of opinion, especially from women.
DePape and the Whitmer conspirators are simply the harvest of what the conservatives and their social media are sowing, encouraging buy-in to their biased, hateful and false messaging, successfully fomenting feelings of empowerment that energize credulous partisans to go out and do harm, and, given McCarthy’s gavel comment, seemingly with his blessing.