CNN
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America’s toxic politics quickly turned the brutal attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into the latest vicious partisan fight — even before the full facts were known.
Police have yet to determine a motive for the attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi after a man broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco. They said the alleged attacker, who went to the house on purpose, shouted, “Where’s Nancy?” CNN reported.
Eight days before the crucial midterm elections, the intense political reaction has outpaced the investigation.
While condemning the violence, Republicans denied any responsibility for creating a toxic political environment. Some have even used it to re-attempt to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections.
Another sign of ugly times is that Pelosi’s misfortune has become the subject of a heinous conspiracy — one amplified at one point by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk, which may suggest the social network is under his leadership how will it develop. Don Jr., the son of former President Donald Trump, also made false claims about the attack, which were in bad taste.
CNN confirms that the insurgency has reignited questions about how much responsibility political leaders must take to moderate the incitement as the suspect posted on Facebook about memes and conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccine, the 2020 election, and January 6, 2021 Sexual remarks to avoid triggering debate violence.
The suspects in the case have yet to be arraigned, but Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have warned that the attack on Pelosi is just the latest inevitable consequence of the Republican Party being overtaken by extreme fringes.
“What makes us think a political party can talk about ‘stolen election’, ‘Covid is a hoax’, ‘it’s all a bunch of lies’ and that doesn’t affect people who may be less balanced?” Biden Friday express.
“What makes us think it won’t corrode the political climate?”
That was a problem even before the Paul Pelosi attack, given that many Republican candidates tried to galvanize their base by placing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 stolen election at the center of their midterm campaigns.
Trump, who remains the de facto leader of the GOP, has yet to condemn the attack on Paul Pelosi. But dozens of Republicans — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from Texas. Ted Cruz, former Vice President Mike Pence and Republican House Session Chair Elise Stefanik have all done so.
Meanwhile, top Republicans on Sunday sidestepped on whether their side had created a particularly dangerous political climate after embracing electoral lies, blaming both sides for the political turmoil.
The divisions between the two parties in the wake of the attack underscored the country’s internal political divide ahead of next week’s elections. It shows that Republicans are unwilling to run afoul of their constituents by being more critical of the extremism that rages on the Republican base. The political shockwaves of the event also suggest that Democrats are keen to tie threats against lawmakers and their families to Trump’s political campaign as rampant inflation threatens to hit them hard at the ballot box.
Yet the aftermath of the attack represents more than just another fault line between Republicans and Democrats, and points to more than just reciprocal rote arguments between rival politicians.
It took place during the scarred days of the Jan. 6 uprising, showing how individuals can be inspired to commit acts of violence in a deteriorating political climate fostered and instigated by Trump. The vast majority of the former president’s supporters have not acted on his false claims about election theft. But while leading Republicans are right to argue that political attacks target prominent figures on both sides, members of only one party are justifying, downplaying or denying the Jan. 6 violence and amplifying false claims about election theft , these claims have been shown to incite violence.
Musk believes fringe conspiracy theories about the Paul Pelosi attack are a sign of a deteriorating political climate. According to CNN’s Oliver D’Arcy and Donnie O’Sullivan, he tweeted and then deleted a link to an article on a website purporting to be a news outlet article. The conspiracy theory was later amplified by Trump Jr. on Twitter.
Another disturbing development this weekend not related to Pelosi’s case but underscored the worrisome extremism surfacing, with a flurry of anti-Semitic messages in public spaces – including football fields, high-speed Highway overpass and downtown buildings in Jacksonville, Florida.
On Sunday, top Republicans denounced the Pelosi attack as a vile crime, but they tended to isolate it from current political tensions, even as the GOP has long demonized the speaker in a tough ad campaign. . Instead, Republicans see it as a symptom of the rise in violent crime they are targeting Democrats.
“That’s disgusting. This violence is horrific,” said the Florida senator. Rick Scott, the head of the Senate Republican campaign, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that his heart goes out to Paul Pelosi and hope he makes a full recovery. But Scott quickly turned to highlighting one Republican lobbyist, his Florida senator. Marco Rubio has said he was attacked in Miami for political reasons. (After the incident, Rubio accused the media of not caring about violence when targeting Republicans.)
Scott also tried to move forward in the interview to tacitly hint at new doubts about the U.S. electoral system. When asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether Republicans should do more to condemn dangerous rhetoric and conspiracy theories, Scott replied: “We have to do everything we can…to make sure people are happy with these elections. We have to do everything we can to do. All efforts have been made to reassure people that this election in nine days will be free and fair and that people’s votes will be counted fairly.”
The reason why millions of Americans have lost faith in the election — despite repeated court rulings to dismiss Trump’s fraud charges and his own Justice Department statement that there were no major violations in 2020 — the former president and many Republican allies are still Falsely claiming the election was stolen.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel rejected the idea that the attack on Paul Pelosi was the inevitable result of the GOP’s growing rhetorical attacks on Democratic politicians.
“We don’t like the situation at all. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.”
She also claimed that Biden did not condemn the suspect arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home who was charged with attempted murder of the conservative Supreme Court justice. (After the arrest, White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden did not believe any threat, violence or attempt to intimidate judges should exist in American society.)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to publicly condemn Paul Pelosi’s attack on camera or on his official social media accounts, or issue a detailed statement. The California Republican did tell Fox on Sunday that he had texted the spokesperson expressing concern and hope for her husband’s full recovery.
“It made me very clear that violence or the threat of violence has no place in our society. What happened to Paul Pelosi was wrong,” he told Fox.
Notably, McCarthy lacked a more public response, as if Republicans win the House next week, he could become the speaker himself and has an institutional responsibility that should sometimes take over the role of partisan politics. That would lead to questions about whether he was pandering to a meeting in which he fervently pro-Trump.
His comments also didn’t seem as direct as Speaker Pelosi’s reaction to the 2017 shooting of Republican whip Steve Scalise during a congressional baseball practice, which she described as a “despicable and cowardly attack on Congress itself.” ,” and said there were “no Democrats” or Republicans at the time. After Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders learned that the deceased suspect in the shooting volunteered for his Democratic presidential campaign, he denounced political violence “in the strongest terms” in his Senate speech.
Pelosi’s attack also highlighted concerns about the general tone of some Republican ads, which sometimes feature candidates brandishing guns.
Republican House campaign chairman Tom Emmer of Minnesota has denied there was any tone to a video he tweeted last week showing him shooting with the hashtag #FirePelosi.
Emmer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the tweet was about “exercising our Second Amendment rights and having fun.”
Another Republican who could play a big role in a future majority is the House of Representatives. Marjorie Taylor Green. Republicans who support Trump say such attacks “should not have happened to Paul Pelosi. This should not have happened to innocent Americans. This should not have happened to me,” claiming she receives daily Death threats.
In 2021, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments on Green’s Facebook page revealed that she has repeatedly expressed support for the execution of prominent Democratic politicians, including Pelosi, in 2018 and 2019 before being re-elected to Congress.
Leading Democrats were quick to link this extremist rhetoric to the rise of violence and intimidation that has led to growing threats to political candidates, with some groups even appearing to monitor drop boxes in states like Arizona, Democrats have criticized the move as an attempt to attack voter intimidation.
Some of them reacted to reports that the alleged attacker in the Paul Pelosi incident had asked where his wife was, and immediately reached conclusions not yet supported by details released by police. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, for example, tweeted, “A far-right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House of Representatives after violent insurgents tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol. Nearly killed her husband a year after her death, and the GOP response is to either ignore it or belittle it.”
Biden was more moderate, but at a fundraiser in Pennsylvania on Friday he also linked far-right rhetoric to far-right rhetoric, referring to the alleged attacker’s demand for “Where’s Nancy?”
“Everyone with a conscience needs to speak clearly and unequivocally against violence in our politics, whatever your politics is,” Biden said.
Former President Barack Obama has made a broader argument about how the coarsening of the political conversation has risked a new outbreak of violence – and put the blame on Republicans.
“This habit of talking bad about people and demonizing people creates a dangerous atmosphere,” the former president said Saturday at a campaign event in Wisconsin.
“If elected officials don’t more explicitly reject this outrageous rhetoric, if they continue to ignore or tacitly support or in some cases encourage it, if they tell supporters that ‘you’ have to stand with a gun and tactical gear Outside the polling place, ‘This kind of thing ends up hurting people.'”