Republicans really need to pretend, through both-sides claims or conspiracy theories, that the attempted assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which missed her but hospitalized her husband Paul, was something other than it is. One of the biggest reasons they need to pretend that is that not only was the assailant totally steeped in Republican conspiracy theories, but so many prominent Republicans have advocated violence against Nancy Pelosi, whether directly or with a wink and a snicker.
Depicting, advocating, or hinting at violence against Pelosi doesn’t just come from the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Before she was in Congress, Greene did like Facebook posts calling for Pelosi's assassination, and herself insisted that Pelosi was “guilty of treason,” a “crime punishable by death.” It goes way beyond that: Establishment Republicans have put actual money into promoting violence against Pelosi.
RELATED STORY: Here comes the gross Republican conspiracy theory about assassination attempt on Pelosi
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In 2009, the Republican National Committee ran an ad “featuring Ms. Pelosi’s face framed by the barrel of a gun—complete with the sound of a bullet firing as red bled down the screen—a takeoff on the James Bond film ‘Goldfinger’ in which the woman second in line to the presidency was cast as Pussy Galore,” The New York Times reports.
In 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made an extremely funny joke—totally a joke, he insists!—about how, if he became speaker of the House and got the speaker’s gavel, “will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with it. Fourteen months later, a man broke into Pelosi’s house with a hammer and hit her husband with it.
More recently, as in last week, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Emmer tweeted a video of himself firing a gun, with text concluding, “13 days to make history. Let’s #FirePelosi.”
Depictions of or references to violent attacks on Pelosi have also come from unsuccessful Republican candidates—but even if the candidates lost, their message spread. “This year, a Republican running in the primary for Senate in Arizona aired an ad showing him in a spaghetti Western-style duel with Democrats, in which he shoots at a knife-wielding, mask-wearing, bug-eyed woman labeled ‘Crazyface Pelosi,’” the Times reports, noting that this borrowed from Donald Trump’s habit of calling Pelosi “Crazy Nancy.”
”In 2010, John Dennis, who challenged Ms. Pelosi in her re-election race, circulated a campaign advertisement in which an actor playing Ms. Pelosi was presiding over an animal sacrifice,” the Times also reports, “and another that depicted her as a wicked witch from ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ In the ad, Mr. Dennis threw a bucket of water labeled ‘freedom’ to melt her away.”
When you sprinkle a few ads like that and a few statements like McCarthy’s into a decade and a half of massive party investment in ads vilifying Pelosi, even where they don’t explicitly portray her as a witch or target of violence, it has an effect. Especially since Republican messaging, more generally, is dedicated to dehumanizing political opponents, fomenting violence, and then excusing violence when it occurs.
Republicans have helpers in evading responsibility. While The New York Times is clearly aware of the ways Republicans have elevated Pelosi as a target and used violent imagery about her—they published a long article on exactly that subject—the newspaper has not treated the attack on her husband, which intended to target her, as a serious political story:
An attempt on the life of the second in line to the presidency by someone who has espoused conspiracy theories pushed by the opposing party should probably be taken a fraction as seriously as email management practices. It’s really a problem that so much of our media can’t see that.
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On The Brief podcast, we speak with Way To Win’s co-founder and vice president, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona. Ancona comes in to discuss how grassroots progressive groups are spending money in the hopes of getting as many voters as possible out for the midterm elections. She also talks about which campaign advertisements are effective and which are not. One thing is for sure, though: We are living in historic times, and what that means for these midterms cannot be easily predicted—so Get Out The Vote!
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