The show began
This is the Ingraham Angle from Washington tonight. Thank you for joining us.
They're desperate, I tell you, desperate! to find any edge on Republicans as midterms approach. In the aftermath of this hideous attack on Paul Pelosi in their San Francisco home, of course we hope and pray for his full recovery from this disgusting attack. The question is will Democrats attempt to use the attacks of lone lunatics to chill political speech.
Her (fallacious) answer is of course. Though the rest of Laura Ingraham's monologue had nothing to do with the apparent terrorist attack in San Francisco, her rant was a fine display of conservative grievance politics. But that is not what makes her remarks dangerous.
I may be going out on the limb here, but I have a hunch that, whatever her hope, Laura Ingraham is not praying for Paul Pelosi's full recovery.
Nor is the atrocious assault by David DePape an attack of a "lone lunatic." There are approximately 362,000 households in San Francisco. DePape decided to break into the home of the Speaker of the Untied States House of Representatives. There are approximately 888,000 people residing in San Francisco. The alleged perpetrator did not yell out "where's Janet" or "where's Michelle" or "where's Ashley." He yelled "where's Nancy" and, given that it was Mr. Paul Pelosi he was attacking, the betting here is he was targeting the most powerful and most hated woman in the USA.
We don't know whether the alleged culprit is mentally ill, although most mentally ill individuals don't take a hammer to the head of someone else, and the vast majority of violent offenders are not "crazy" or "lunatics." We can assume that DePape's choice of the Pelosi couple had something to do with Nancy's position as probably the second most powerful individual in the nation. Had the Speaker been home, it would have qualified as an assassination attempt.
"Mental illness" has been a dodge for decades, in and out of politics- here by a Putin sympathizer. For most of that time, it has been largely harmless. Of late, it has become the GOP excuse for avoiding gun safety legislation, and will increasingly be used to wave away political violence.
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