Last Friday, at 2:30-ish in the morning, a man allegedly broke into Paul and Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer.*
The attack fractured Mr. Pelosi’s skull, forcing emergency surgery, but fortunately he’s expected to make a full recovery.
Police have arrested David DePape for the assault and numerous associated felonies. The 42-year-old is surprisingly well-known in California politics, long “affiliated with a prominent pro-nudist activism group in the Bay Area,” and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “a sort of ‘father figure’ at a group home in Berkeley.”
Police have yet to offer any motive for the attack but say the assailant was asking, “Where is Nancy?” Fortunately, the Speaker of the House wasn’t there, but back in Washington.
Newsweek reports that DePape has “espoused numerous mainstream and right-wing conspiracy theories, including the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, climate change denial, COVID-19 vaccine and mask skepticism, and other ideas associated with QAnon.”
In recent weeks, DePape was apparently living in a school bus parked in front of his ex-wife’s home. She — a fellow nudity activist, now serving an unrelated prison term — explains plainly: “He is mentally ill.”
Nevertheless, our statesmen strive for a deeper meaning. One they can harness.
“While the motive is still unknown,” tweeted Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), “we know where this kind of violence is sanctioned and modeled.”
Calling it “the direct result of toxic right-wing rhetoric and incitement,” State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Fran) declared, “Words have consequences, and without question, the GOP’s hate and extremism has bred political violence.”
But then consider what former President Barack Obama told a crowd in Michigan over the weekend: “This habit of saying the worst about other people, demonizing people, that creates a dangerous climate.”
Does it? Left, right and all around? You don’t say.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* I’ve never been attacked by a hammer-wielding man, but it sounds especially unpleasant. On the other hand, I have “attacked” myself with a hammer on several occasions, but that was ostensibly unintentional.
Note: There is still much we do not know about this crime. For instance, just yesterday it was disclosed that “there was a third person inside the house that opened the door for police.”
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26 replies on “Right-Wing Nudist from Berkeley”
The main-stream of the media are looking away from some of the quite odd details to this story, with a presumptive fear that the resolution will not merely fail to conform to their favored narrative but will humiliate Ms Pelosi.
That fear might prove quite mistaken, but their possession of that fear and their response to that fear speaks to the corruption of the corporate left. Even if mutterings that “Fox and the Republicans are worse!” were true, that argument justifies or excuses none of this behavior.
NBC News is walking back the story that there was a third person in the house. SFPD also says that DePape and Pelosi were the only two people in the house. There is also a report that the broken glass was on the outside of the house, suggesting that the hammer was wielded inside the house by one of the two men. There is no excuse for DePape’s attack on Pelosi, but there is also no evidence that this was a home invasion, barring the Pelosi family’s release of security camera footage that must have been taken. If such footage exists, it would have to come out at DePape’s trial. We’ll have to wait and see. For now, the press and Pelosi have their narrative and they’re sticking to it.
Yes, I guess that was ‘the fog of war’ type report. We shall see.
The idea that a third person opened the door for police seems to have originated with Jeremy B. White at Politico, an outlet both that has a long history of left-wing bias and that has chided Republicans for getting important details of this story wrong. Politico corrected their story without explicitly acknowledging what they’d previously reported.
Wrong as usual!
“In a sworn affidavit with the U.S. District Court of Northern California, FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor — a domestic terrorism specialist assigned to the bureau’s San Francisco Field Office — described how the alleged assailant, 42-year-old Berkeley man David DePape, told police that he planned to take Speaker Pelosi hostage, interrogate her, and possibly break her kneecaps.
The Speaker was not at home at the time of the invasion.
The criminal complaint states that DePape broke through a rear glass door of the residence with a hammer that he later used to beat Paul Pelosi. He brought zip ties, tape, rope and gloves, as well.”
Pam, you don’t seem to have bothered to read what anyone here has actually said. Even if the journalistic report that you quote were correct in every detail, it would not contradict anything said by Paul, by Pat, or by me.
Yes it would. The hammer was used to break into the house, not to break the glass after entry. Read!!!
Pat noted a report that fragmentary glass was on the outside. Pat didn’t say that the report were true. The whole point of his comment is that conflicting reports have been made, with some later retracted. Pay attention before you go-off half-cocked.
This is what happens when you spread lies!
“Aug. 19: “I appreciate” people who believed a conspiracy theory
At a White House briefing, a reporter asked Trump what he thought of the QAnon movement, adherents of an elaborate, false conspiracy theory. The FBI had previously warned that this conspiracy would likely cause people to “carry out criminal or violent acts.”
Trump replied: “Well, I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”
Sept. 29: “Stand back and stand by”
At a presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to denounce white supremacists. Instead, he told the Proud Boys — which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a hate group associated with white nationalism — to “stand back and stand by.” “
And the lies have continued since Biden was elected.
Pam, it’s not helpful to your cause for you to post comments so easily refuted. Trump clearly didn’t endorse the conspiracy theory; he merely expressed thanks for the admiration of those strange folk.
And the leader of the Proud Boys is not himself white, which should cause one to wonder about the SPLC. What manner of association do the Proud Boys actually have with racist hate? The SPLC is first-and-foremost a fund-raising organization; their classification scheme is tailored to damage any rivals to the political tribe from whom the SPLC gets funds. I suggest that you go to the site of The New Yorker (a decidedly left-wing magazine) and find their article of 21 March 2019, “The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center” by Bob Moser.
Just like Trump and the KKK. Don’t throw me in the briar patch!
“When Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep asked Duke whether he thought “Trump voters are your voters,” Duke replied, “Well of course they are. Because I represent the ideas of preserving this country and the heritage of this country, and I think Trump represents that as well.”
Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed Duke and his support. But during the Republican primary, Trump generated a wave of negative headlines for not immediately doing so when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“Would you just say unequivocally you condemn them and you don’t want their support? ” Tapper asked.
“I have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about,” Trump responded.
The candidate later blamed the exchange on a faulty earpiece, and has repeatedly — and at times exasperatedly — disavowed Duke since then.”
Various neo-Nazis and Klan figures also endorsed Hillary Clinton, which proves nothing much except exactly that such endorsements tell us little about the recipients.
And the conspiracy tweeted by Elon Musk? Where is your concern about that?
“(CNN) Elon Musk on Sunday gave credence to a fringe conspiracy theory about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi.
The new Twitter owner tweeted a link to an article full of baseless claims about Pelosi. The article was posted on a website that purports to be a news outlet.
Musk, who has 112 million followers on the platform he now owns, posted the baseless story about Pelosi in response to a tweet from Hilary Clinton at 8:15 am ET. He later deleted the tweet around 2 pm, but not before racking up more than 28,000 retweets and 100,000 likes.”
Here is what Musk tweeted about:
“False Rumor Claims Paul Pelosi Brought Attacker Home from Gay Bar
The Santa Monica Observer, the website that originally pushed this false rumor, later updated its story.”
Where is your concern about this garbage and Musk?
Where have any of us provided some blanket endorsement of Musk? In this ‘blog, Paul has explicitly said that he provides no such endorsement. Elsewhere, I have called Musk an opportunist and compared him to PT Barnum.
I don’t follow Musk’s tweets, and don’t know what he’s been saying.
“San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, also rejected conspiracy theories about the attack, confirming the assailant was targeting the Democratic leader when he broke into the couple’s home.
“At the time that the suspect had entered the Pelosi home that he was in fact, looking for Ms. Pelosi,” Jenkins told reporters late Sunday in San Francisco.
“The other thing is we want to make it clear that there were only two people in the home at the time that the police arrived, Mr. Pelosi and the suspect, there was no third person present,” she said.
“We have nothing to suggest that these two men knew each other prior to this incident.” “
But do you have a more reliable source than a Democratic politician for those claims?
Are you really that stupid?
And, again, when pushed to make a proper argument, you instead resort to an irrelevant personal attack.
You really are that stupid!!!
Where is your criticism of Trump, Musk and/ or the January 6th insurrection?
Early reports are usually inaccurate on the facts!
And again, Pam, instead of a proper argument you call your opponents stupid.
This is not my ‘blog. At my ‘blog I have criticized Trump, though most of my public criticisms of him have been made on Facebook. All of my public criticisms of Musk have been made on Facebook.
As to the alleged insurrection, I note that if it truly had been such, then the insurrectionist would have fired some of the shots. It was a dumbass demonstration, with some of the dumbasses going further to riot; even then, the level of rioter violence didn’t match that if the BLM riots.
Insurrection:
“A violent uprising against an authority or government.”
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a DUCK!
It WAS an insurrection that wanted to stop the congress from punting the electoral votes that would confirm the election of Biden. People were killed, injured, etc.
Pam, you attempt to read that definition a peculiar way in this case would, in application to the BLM riots, also call them “insurrections”.
But an insurrection isn’t merely a violent demonstration against actions by a government, but an attempt to displace that government. The 6 January demonstrator generally, and the vast majority of even of the 6 January rioters, had no intention of displacing the government. Instead, they imagined themselves as preventing an unlawful seizure of the Presidency.
Go over the list of crimes for which people have actually been convicted in association with the demonstration. No one has been convicted of insurrection. (And no one arrested was carrying a firearm.)
You cannot duck the facts here.
You may be a “quack”!
Pam,
Anyone, no matter how wrong, can deliver a bald insult. You need to provide proper arguments.
BLM demonstrations were about the police killing unarmed blacks.
Anyone who entered the Capitol is an insurrectionist trying to prevent the congress from counting the electoral votes.
We’re you there?
Again: The BLM protests and riots were against what the government was doing; that did not make them insurrections. The 6 January protest and roit were against what the governent was doing; that did not make either or both an insurrection. An insurrection is an attempt to displace the government.