Paul Pelosi Almost Died, and Most Republicans Don’t Have a Big Problem With That

Though he would obviously deny it, what D’Souza is doing there is telling his followers: This violence is all right. That was also the message from Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who thought it was appropriate to use the attack as a set-up to a punch line about sending Nancy Pelosi back to California. With his formulation—violence is wrong, “but…”—he was telling people there was no need to take this seriously.

Every Republican who went on Fox News over the weekend to talk about DePape’s attack as just another example of crime gone wild in liberal San Francisco was doing the same. And saying “but Steve Scalise” and “but Brett Kavanaugh” and “but Lee Zeldin” (two other conservatives who were targets of real or threatened violence this year) has the same effect. Not taking an absolute stand against political violence signals to deranged people that there is no moral standard against that violence, that we are just floating along on a vast sea of carnage that is indiscriminate and random and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, so go ahead, fire away.

Sure, “both sides” are capable of violence. But only one side is regularly inciting it. And some left-wing randos on Twitter don’t count. As if there is an equivalence between some guy with 300 followers and the man in charge of the National Republican Congressional Committee (that’s Emmer).