Fox News’ Jesse Watters shrugged off the brutal assault on Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband throughout his Friday night monologue by saying that getting hit with a hammer was unremarkable.
“Persons are being hit with hammers day by day. Persons are being pushed into subways, slashed, shot in chilly blood, however the media focuses on this one single crime to pin it on Republicans?” he mentioned on his present, “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
In Watters’ thoughts, the assault was nothing particular within the present landscape of violent crime, an advanced concern Republicans have seized on of their midterm speaking factors to color Democrats as too delicate.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was rushed to a hospital and underwent surgical procedure to handle a cranium fracture earlier on Friday after a person broke into the San Francisco home he shares with his wife, who was in Washington, D.C., on the time.
The suspect, 42-year-old David DePape, had requested, “The place is Nancy? The place is Nancy?”
An acquaintance told CNN that DePape was “out of contact with actuality” and had been scuffling with homelessness and laborious medication. He posted conspiracy theories to his Fb web page in regards to the 2020 election and the 2021 Capitol assault. A weblog authored by “daviddepape” featured related content material, together with antisemitic sentiments and opinions associated to the QAnon conspiracy idea, CNN reported.
Many see the assault on Pelosi as a product of escalating political rhetoric.
Nancy Pelosi, specifically, has been vilified by the GOP for years. Throughout Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, individuals were filmed yelling, “The place’s Nancy?” One fantasized about dragging her down the Capitol steps, her “head hitting each fucking stair.”
But on Fox Information, anchors rushed to painting it for instance of the randomness of crime.
“This will occur anyplace,” host Invoice Hemmer told his audience minutes after the story broke Friday morning. “Crime is random, and that’s why it’s such a major a part of this election story.”
Watters, thought of by Fox to be a part of its opinion facet, echoed his colleagues, telling his viewers, “Individuals in San Francisco are smashing folks within the head day by day, and so they get bailed out, and so they don’t get hit with tried homicide costs.”
He seemed to be referencing the progressive motion to finish money bail for nonviolent offenders, declining to notice that such policies base the choice of pretrial launch on the offender’s threat to the neighborhood.
DePape was charged with a number of felonies on Friday, together with tried homicide, assault with a lethal weapon and elder abuse.
Talking Friday evening, President Joe Biden condemned the assault and slammed the tone that has come to saturate right-wing politics.
“There’s an excessive amount of violence — political violence — an excessive amount of hatred, an excessive amount of vitriol,” he mentioned. “What makes us suppose that one social gathering can discuss stolen elections, COVID being a hoax, [that] it’s all a bunch of lies, and it doesn’t have an effect on individuals who is probably not so well-balanced?”