The right-wing-o-sphere has spent most of the day figuring out the angle on a (very likely) right-wing MAGA Big Lie-believer who attacked and seriously injured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer. The attack took place early Friday morning after the man broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco, California. According to reports, Mr. Pelosi was able to contact police during the ordeal and the suspect is now in custody.
Republican officials like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin made jokes at Pelosi’s expense while on the campaign trail, because actually offering up a policy idea is so far afield for the GOP at this point they can’t honestly do anything except attack the Democratic speaker of the House. Fox News tried to present the attack as proof that Democratic officials are soft on crime and that by letting nonviolent drug offenders out of outrageously long prison sentences, Democrats are somehow courting unconnected violent crime.
They did this usually after about three or four obligatory sentences saying they hoped Paul Pelosi would be okay. One of Fox News’ top ghouls these days, Jesse Watters, used the Murdoch-owned microphone to really go off the rails though—even by whatever standards Fox News might have left.
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After saying he hoped Mr. Pelosi would get better soon because “Getting hit in the head with a hammer doesn’t sound fun at all,” Watters went on to say the suspect in custody was “an illegal alien” from Canada, who was “a homeless nudist,” and Watters, having read his social media pages, could tell the guy was “whacked” and “crazy,” and that the only reason he was still in the United States was that “San Francisco is a sanctuary city.” From there, Watters reiterated the only talking point on Fox News today: that the “crime wave” that right-wing media outlets have decided to pretend exists is somehow the Democrats’ fault.
For example, if you look at San Francisco, where even San Franciscans were convinced there was a crime wave, the numbers have been trending down for years, and even the small uptick in crimes over the past two years is still at historic lows. This is true in many blue parts of the country. In fact, violent crimes, the ones that Jesse Watters and other outlets like to scare people at home about, are at far lower rates in places like California than at their worst, which was over three decades ago. That’s “decades,” with a “D.”
But this is your run-of-the-mill right-wing and (frankly) center media misinformation reporting on crime. This is the moment where Jesse Watters went into a bizarre and truly odious run where he lied, misinformed, and misrepresented everything about everybody, in order to serve what passes for rhetoric at the bottom of the barrel these days. “What I want is that I want this alleged perpetrator to be treated the exact same way, if he had treated, if he had attacked anybody else. Because a lot of people get hit with hammers.”
Yes: “A lot of people get hit with hammers” is newly minted defense attorney Jesse Watters’ argument for freeing a man suspected of attempted murder. Maybe Jesse doesn’t understand how having a deadly weapon and using said weapon in a way that could cause not only bodily harm but death distinguishes this assault charge in a way that say, someone slapping Jesse Watters in the face does not.
Watters proceeds to explain that he does not understand laws (or anything), by saying, “A lot of people get attacked and a lot of the times they're out on bail the next day. And it's a simple assault charge. So I don't know why this guy is being treated differently and he's facing attempted homicide.” Is Watters really saying that the guy that by most reports attempted to tie up Paul Pelosi at around 2 in the morning, after attacking him with a hammer and fracturing his skull, possibly saying he wanted to wait for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to come home so he could ostensibly assault her, should be let out of jail because he thinks these events equate to a simple “assault” charge? Is Watters then saying that the charge of “attempted homicide” is trumped up?
But Watters is not a particularly smart man. His main talents seems to be having a solid hairline, the ability to read from a teleprompter, and having no shame. “He's in prison right now. We've seen people assault people all the time randomly with all kinds of weapons, and we see them released the next day. So I don't know why this guy is getting all of a sudden special treatment or different treatment because the the victim was so high-profile.”
He then conflates how bleeding-heart liberals want welfare checks to be done by professionals as opposed to law enforcement officers, with someone calling the police because a guy is trying to kill them with a hammer. “Remember, if you call on a welfare check, the left wants to send a social worker. What if a social worker had come to this call? You would have had a dead husband and you would have had a dead social worker. That's why you have to have police.”
This is the kind of bile you expect out of a two-bit, low-rent, movie bad guy who is living a secretly depraved life of miserable misanthropy.
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