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Paul Pelosi

1 23 belated

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recurring butt of jokes because violence is fun and funny?

“pelosi” is a devil term

We Investigated A Secret Club For Billionaires - More Perfect Union - Democratic Underground Forums

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So I compared our attendee list to McCormick donors.

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11 men in Mandalay camp donated to McCormick's campaign.

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And that's not even including the ones who gave through dark money tricks.

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As Senator McCormick was part of an announcement with President Trump

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for a big push for AI investment in Pennsylvania data centers and power plants.

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at the same event was...

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this guy

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Brendan Bechtel, the latest family CEO and heir to the Bechtel fortune.

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Bechtel is poised to get billions in construction contracts from this deal.

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funneling money and power to Bechtel seems as important

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to the Trump administration as it did to earlier administrations.

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Bechtel is getting big deals with foreign companies for U.S. construction, brokered by Trump.

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They have money tied up in the Venezuelan pipelines Trump wants to seize from the Venezuelan people,

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and they've been floated as a beneficiary of the Kushner/Trump plan to rebuild Gaza.

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We're seeing a level of collusion among the ultra wealthy that seems almost unbeatable.

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They are all on the same team. They are all protecting each other.

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It's not even about party politics, Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, is on the list, as is his nephew,

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who works for Harlan Crowe, as are several major centrist and Democratic Party donors.

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They have class solidarity, but so do we.

RESEARCH/STUDY

Republican convention features speakers who have called for and downplayed political violence

Media outlets should not buy Trumpist spin when many figures who are speaking have advocated violence

WRITTEN BY ZACHARY PLEAT

PUBLISHED 07/16/24

Media outlets covering the RNC convention should not buy the MAGA narrative that messaging has “softened” or that there is any sort of “unity” pivot.

Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for president, reportedly reframed the Republican National Convention on the fly around the theme of “unity” after a shooter targeted him during a rally a few days previously, grazing his ear and killing a bystander. But many of the featured RNC speakers, including Trump himself, have a history of encouraging political violence or downplaying it when it happens to Democrats.

Key among these speakers is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is currently scheduled for a prime-time speaking slot before Trump’s speech and has a long history of encouraging conspiracy theories that reportedly inspired multiple mass shootings throughout the country. He was also a primary validator of the lies that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as Trump supporters sought to prevent Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory, and also aired a campaign of lies about its aftermath.

But Carlson is far from the only scheduled convention speaker who has validated political violence. Many others, including Republican elected officials and candidates, downplayed the violence of the January 6 insurrection, called for violence against protesters, and in at least one case called for violence against Democrats.

Case in point, during his speech during the first night of the convention, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) strayed from the supposedly unifying themes by directly accosting the Democratic Party, whose policies he labeled "a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people.”

In a 2023 interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Kirk said: “If we, as the figures in the media, the people that have audiences, aren't clear about the proper course of action, that this is gonna get wildly out of control. In a way that people will act you know, I don't want them to act violently. I don't. I'm trying to preach peace as much as possible. But … it's almost like they're being provoked, and I don’t like that.” In another 2023 instance, Kirk said to his audience: “They would love nothing more than for people to act uncharacteristic. They need to try to incite you to right-wing violence to justify their mass takeover of the country.” And in July 2023, Kirk said “the left” wants “another January 6,” and “they have been preempting us and preconditioning us with domestic violent extremism and right-wing violence.” Media Matters, [10/27/21, 8/17/23, 4/3/23, 7/28/23]

5 24 DA asked for 40 yrs, hr got 30, resent b/c did not get to spk 1st, 30 yrs aaty said he fell into conspr theory rabbit hole; just going to brk her knees

see echo escalator

mma

The right-wing ecosystem that created the Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 10/31/22

It took roughly 48 hours for the right-wing media ecosystem to turn a story about a man who committed political violence after becoming consumed by right-wing conspiracy theories about the depravity of the left into another right-wing conspiracy theory about the depravity of the left.

On Friday morning, a man broke into the San Francisco home of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and, according to law enforcement, was looking for the woman who is second in line to the presidency. She was not present, but the man did find and severely beat her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, sending him to the hospital for emergency surgery.

The assailant, who was arrested and identified by police as David DePape, had an extensive Internet footprint that suggests a standard case of online right-wing radicalization. DePape’s writings show his adherence to a wide range of conspiracy theories that are often propped up or adopted in their entirety by prominent right-wing media figures and Republican officials. President Joe Biden on Friday night condemned the impact the Republican Party’s “vitriol” has on those who may be mentally unbalanced.

But in the days since the attack, people who get their news from right-wing sources have instead been told an absurd and baseless conspiracy theory. In this telling, there was no home invasion; instead DePape is actually Paul Pelosi’s leftist gay lover, and the police, Democrats, and the press are covering up that the assault was really a lovers’ spat. The tale was quickly adopted by influential right-wing figures – including Twitter owner Elon Musk – and, if past is prologue, will be accepted by a sizable percentage of the GOP base.

The Pelosi conspiracy theory took hold so quickly thanks to the parallel media ecosystem the right constructed over decades. That ecosystem features numerous outlets that generate conspiracy theories for partisan and financial gain; food-chain mechanisms that swiftly distribute them to millions of people; an existing right-wing audience trained to demand such fantasies; minimal internal guardrails within the right-wing press to provide more credible information; and strong external barriers against contrary information from mainstream news sources.

How the right built a Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory

The right’s conspiracy theorists went to work soon after news of Paul Pelosi’s assault broke. They create dubious but politically beneficial narratives by taking existing facts – particularly ones that emerge early in the life of a story, when initial reports are often wrong – mixing in falsehoods, and using wild logical jumps to put the result in a different context.

First, an investigative journalist at a local TV affiliate reported on Friday that the assailant was wearing only his underwear when police arrived. But the journalist retracted that reporting the same day, and no other outlet confirmed it.

Second, the dispatcher who received a 911 call from Paul Pelosi said that he had identified the intruder as a “friend.” But Pelosi, according to law enforcement, was making that call surreptitiously from the bathroom and speaking “in code” to the dispatcher in an attempt to avoid his suspicion.

Third, some alleged that there were no signs of forced entry at the Pelosi home, suggesting that Paul Pelosi had willingly let DePape inside. In fact, police say he forced entry through the rear door, and aerial photos and video show shattered glass around that entryway (in fact, other internet sleuths claim that the glass pattern is suspicious).

Fourth, Politico reported on Friday based on San Francisco Police Chief William Scott’s press conference that the first police officers responding on the scene “were let inside by an unknown person. They discovered DePape and Pelosi struggling for a hammer.” This generated speculation that a third individual had been present. But Scott did not actually say that, and the SFPD subsequently confirmed only two people, DePape and Paul Pelosi, were at the home when police arrived.

The right’s conspiracy theorists took those four pieces of evidence, mixed in Paul Pelosi’s May DUI charge, and concocted the narrative that hehad been the victim of a drunken gay lovers’ spat that was subsequently covered up.

By Sunday, versions of this speculation were rampant on the right. Commentators who present themselves as credible offered a version in which they were simply asking questions because the press supposedly refused to do so.

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Those who lack such airs simply claimed, as Dinesh D’Douza did, that “this guy, the assailant, is either a sexual partner or a male prostitute, and this is a sexual rendezvous that went sideways.”

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Eventually, the story reached Musk, a troll beloved on the right with a penchant for conspiracy theories. And on Sunday morning, he blasted it out to his 112 million Twitter followers.

After Hillary Clinton shared an article about DePape’s promotion of conspiracy theories and commented that “violence is the result” of the right spreading such lies, Musk responded, “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye.” He provided a link to a site with the headline, “The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning."

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The website, the Santa Monica Observer, had previously alleged that Clinton died in 2016 and had been replaced by a body double for her presidential debate with Donald Trump.

At the same time, the right-wing media generated nonsensical explanations for why the assailant’s Internet footprint is forged and he’s actually a leftist. They cannot accept that the assailant believed right-wing conspiracy theories without taking on responsibility, so they’ve developed an alternate explanation instead.

Roughly 72 hours after news of the assault on Paul Pelosi had broken, the conspiracy theory had been promoted by a Republican member of Congress and by Donald Trump Jr., and “Pelosigaylover” was trending nationally on Twitter.

The conspiracy-minded ecosystem that fuels the right

The right-wing information ecosystem is built to create and propagate conspiracy theories like the latest drivel about the Pelosi attack.

On message boards and social media platforms, an army of right-wing would-be sleuths looking for political advantage or simple amusement are constantly on the hunt for raw materials that they can spin into these alternate narratives.

Hyperpartisan news sites with no journalistic standards – from local ones like the Santa Monica Observer to national players like Gateway Pundit – trawl those venues looking for stories that they can write up and monetize.

The conspiracy theories move up the right-wing media food chain, with more and more prominent influencers and outlets picking up the story and running with it, until it becomes pervasive on the right.

Sprawling conspiracy theories like 2020 election denial, QAnon, Pizzagate, and Gamergate – all of which DePape had championed – worked their way through these networks.

The right-wing audience is uniquely vulnerable to these narratives.

The right-wing press spent decades spinning out these politically convenient narratives about the diabolical nature of their perceived enemies until the audience came to demand them. Few on the right – and none with any real degree of influence – are interested in debunking the rampant lies once they get going. Instead, powerful figures at Fox News and elsewhere end up pushing the likes of QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism. And decades of right-wing attacks on the mainstream press have created a bubble in which the audience is unlikely to receive or credit contradictory information from those outlets.

The result is that we consistently see the conspiracy theories come to infest the ranks of the movement, from Vince Foster’s death to QAnon.

I expect the Paul Pelosi fantasy to follow the same route. Republican politicians and prominent Fox hosts will either stand by as the conspiracy theory builds credence on the right or even give a knowing wink and nod to its supporters. Some will probably promote it entirely, perhaps suggesting that these are simply questions that the media refuses to answer.

Credible news outlets will divert resources from covering the rising tide of right-wing political violence or the GOP’s disturbing policy aims if the party gains ground in the midterm elections to pointing out that the right is peddling nonsense about Pelosi. But thanks to the right-wing media bubble, their facts won’t make it to the people inclined to believe it. And so a sizable chunk of the GOP will come to believe an absurd lie.

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during a recent segment on Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy cracked a joke at the expense of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-California) husband, Paul, in reference to an incident where he was hospitalized after a home invasion.

The Daily Beast reported that Campos-Duffy made the remark while discussing President Joe Biden awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the United States' highest non-military honor — to the former speaker at a recent White House ceremony. Other recipients included Team USA Gymnastics Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, former Secretary of State John Kerry and a posthumous award for assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers, among others.

At one point, guest host Pete Hegseth and Campos-Duffy bandied about other names for hypothetical future medal of freedom ceremonies they felt were more deserving. Campos-Duffy's list included conservative singer Kid Rock, anti-transgender activist Riley Gaines, members of the U.S. Border Patrol and billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, for "absolutely caring about freedom of speech" (Musk's social media platform, X, punishes users for tweeting the word "cisgender").

READ MORE:['Drop the hammer': Judge releases footage of 'violent attack' on Paul Pelosi

"It’s probably more likely to go to Paul Pelosi, Susan Rice and Gavin Newsom,” Hegseth predicted, referring to the former Obama administration official and the governor of California presumed to run for president in 2028. “So I think your list is correct but a little off-brand for ‘Big Joe.’”

"Well maybe Paul Pelosi needs the — the hammer instead of the medal," Campus-Duffy said in response, holding up her hand as if clutching a hammer.

"It's metal," said Hegseth.

"It's metal!" Campus-Duffy said with a laugh.

READ MORE:**:{Paul Pelosi's suspected attacker claimed House Speaker Nancy used 'fake evidence to spy on' Donald Trump**}:

The attack on Paul Pelosi happened in 2022. Far-right Holocaust denier David DePape was charged after the attack and eventually convicted on two felony counts: Assault on the immediate family member of a federal official, and kidnapping a federal official.

In a DOJ press release, FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp said that DePape's attack was the fault of his "misguided ideology," and stated he was confident that Pelosi's attacker "will face the full weight of justice."

"Our public servants and their families deserve to work and live without threats and violence. Defendant’s violent plan to kidnap then-Speaker Pelosi was rooted in his virulent disagreement with her as a result of her official position," U.S. attorney Ismail J. Ramsey said in a public statement. "His violent plan ended with the assault on Mr. Pelosi. Today’s verdict brings justice to the Pelosi family and to the idea that violence has no place in politics."

DePape due to be sentenced on May 17, and faces a maximum potential sentence of 50 years in prison.

Click here to read the Beast's report in full (subscription required).

READ MORE:[Trump lawyer writes conspiratorial post questioning Paul Pelosi hammer assault

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Watters was instrumental in spreading doubt about the attack on Paul Pelosi, saying, “If we’ve learned anything about the Pelosis, you just gotta keep asking questions.” Watters continued to “keep asking questions” about Pelosi’s attack even after police released body cam footage that seemingly undermined Watters’ preferred — and extremely homophobic — narrative that Paul Pelosi was attacked by his leftist gay lover: “We still don’t know who opened the door. Was it Paul? Was it the cops? Did they not play that part of the footage in the courtroom? Why is this, such a simple detail, so hard to pin down?” Watters asked. Twitter/X, [10/31/22; Media Matters, 12/16/22]

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CHRIS HAYES (HOST): There's also another thing that I've been watching happening on the right, and I think this is because of the sort of polarization around low trust, high trust. But the InfoWars-ization of right-wing media, and I say this even in the like, even when you move it outside the bounds of polarizing, like did aliens build the pyramids? This is like a hoary conspiratorial cliché for decades, right? That’s the kind of thing you’re seeing right-wing media people talk about now. It doesn’t even score a political point. It's just this view that, like, everything they tell you is a lie, that is more and more taking over that entire universe.

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): Yes, and I think that what's concerning about that, and sort of the fact that has led into it is that, one, obviously social media and, in particular, the metastasizing of the QAnon conspiracy in the spring of 2020 coupled with all of the COVID stuff really helped that sort of, just that toxicity spill over.

But the other factor is that, it's worth keeping in mind that a very large segment of Republican leaders started to organize power on what used to be considered the fringes. And as they started to increasingly organize power on what used to be considered the fringes, using the right-wing media as a conduit for accessing that, they brought all that stuff that, you know, used to be on the fringes more toward the center. That's why something like groomers and pedophilia would be sort of far out there stuff years ago. And that is mainstream Republican orthodoxy now, it's not even controversial to say that, you know, Democrats are sexualizing children. Everyone is saying that in Republican politics. You don't have to be an extremist to make that point.

HAYES: There is a final point here, which I didn't note in the monologue, which is Elon Musk's particular role in this, who purchased Twitter and one of the first, most notable things he did in Twitter. And it was the first time I ever encountered this ludicrous, gross conspiracy theory that the two men had some relationship and that this was, like, a lovers' quarrel or something like that, was Elon Musk tweeting about it in a response to Hillary Clinton. That really put rocket fuel. He has since said he's apologized, but, like, Elon Musk owns a huge share of this entire thing.

CARUSONE: He does, because -- and this is exactly the danger for him being in charge. I mean, he supercharged that conspiracy theory. And it's worth noting that that is sort of the function of Twitter now after Elon Musk, is that it's kind of become a red pill PEZ dispenser, where these conspiracies, these really far out things are increasingly getting supercharged because they're gettingalgorithmic boosts.So even things that Elon Musk doesn't promote, we're actually seeing get supercharged all the time now.

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video released Friday of the harrowing home invasion and assault that nearly killed then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband in October brought little in the way of self-reflection or regret from far-right Internet trolls and Fox News stars who spent months baselessly insisting that the attack had actually resulted from a gay tryst gone wrong. Instead, the denizens of the right-wing conspiracy theory ecosystem either claimed that the new evidence proved that they were right all along, or used it to float additional conspiracy theories about why it hadn’t been released earlier.

The key facts were available within hours of the October 28, 2022, attack. Law enforcement swiftly alleged that David DePape broke into the Democratic leader’s home in the middle of the night seeking to harm her and pummeled her 82-year-old husband Paul, sending him to the hospital for emergency surgery. Journalists who reviewed DePape’s Internet history subsequently revealed that he had been radicalized online and espoused a wide array of right-wing conspiracy theories, including QAnon. 

This narrative of a right-wing extremist who believed the conspiracy theories one sees on Fox beating up an old man while looking for his wife was very unflattering to Republicans. So the right’s extensive, well-funded media apparatus seized on the sorts of minor inconsistencies and trivialities that often characterize breaking news stories, and developed their alternative narrative: DePape was Paul Pelosi’s leftist gay lover and the assault was a tryst gone bad that Democrats, journalists, and law enforcement were now covering up to protect Nancy Pelosi and help the Democrats in the midterm elections. 

Within days, this homophobic absurdity spread through right-wing fever swamps, was amplified by Twitter owner Elon Musk, and went up the food chain to outlets like OAN and Fox. Nothing seemed to give pause to the conspiracy theorists over the following weeks, including the federal complaint which stated that police witnessed DePape “striking Pelosi in the head” with a hammer and that he subsequently told an investigator that he had broken into the home as part of a plan “to hold Nancy hostage,” and reports from within the courtroom that police body camera footage showed the attack.

Friday’s court-ordered release of new evidence — security footage of DePape breaking into the Pelosi home, Paul Pelosi’s 911 call, and police bodycam footage that showed DePape and Pelosi struggling over the hammer and then DePape repeatedly using it to strike him — was perhaps the final potential avenue for the right-wing commentators who had promoted the lie to take the offramp back to sanity. With few exceptions, they did not do so. 

Instead, many of the Internet trolls who examined the footage claimed vindication. Several noticed that Paul Pelosi wasn’t wearing pants and was carrying a glass when police arrived. This seems to obviously point to Pelosi being woken by a midnight intruder and subsequently trying to deescalate the situation. But for far-right extremist Laura Loomer, it means the attack was “a Grindr booty call gone wrong,” whileJohn Cardillo, a Trumpist pundit who has reportedly been courted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political operation, commented, “This was no home invasion. This looks more like a domestic quarrel.”

Fox’s coverage of the releases, while occasionally punctuated by anchors debunking their guests’ absurd claims, also featured the new conspiracy theories promoted from the fringes.

Fox star host Tucker Carlson, one of the network’s most prolific proponents of Paul Pelosi conspiracy theories, suggested Friday night that the disclosures were part of “a much larger propaganda campaign.” He acknowledged that the video of the attack was “absolutely awful” before suggesting that it raised new questions. 

“It's also weird [he was] standing there with a drink,” Carlson said. “What was that? We can't even speculate as to what that was.” 

Carlson went on to say that the new evidence backed up his own narrative about the attack. “That bodycam footage, whatever else it proves — and once again, we're not exactly sure what it proves — it definitely puts a crimp in their preferred story, which was that the Pelosi household was invaded by QAnon activists or something or this was some right-wing militia attack on the speaker of the House's husband,” he said. “That’s not what it shows.”

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Carlson and his guest, right-wing journalist Christopher Bedford, went on to allege that there was something nefarious about the government not releasing the videos more quickly. The delay, Bedford said, shows “how much contempt they have for us that they're saying we don't deserve that information, or well, we'll just be misled by it.” 

The host wrapped up by asking his guest, “Do you think there are still good government liberals out there who are bothered by the obvious corruption on display around us every single day? Do they even care?”

Others at Fox similarly suggested that the right had been correct to believe conspiracy theories about the case, or that the government was at fault for not moving more quickly to rebut them — an implicit acknowledgement of how paranoid thinking has consumed that political movement.

Fox host Todd Piro said of the bodycam footage on Friday afternoon, “It's going to dispel a lot of those conspiracies that many of us have because California is a Democratic state and we've seen the pattern play out in the past where, I hate to make this political, but Democrats have a tendency to hide and not be transparent when something could potentially make them look in a bad light.”

That night, network contributorJoe Concha complained to host Sean Hannity, “It took nearly three months for that footage to be seen by the public, and by slow-walking this, just as police did following Paul Pelosi's DUI arrest earlier that year — remember he crashed his Porsche into another car in wine country — the questions around this attack only grew louder and the conspiracy theories profoundly stupider.”

And Fox host Pete Hegseth,who initially responded to the attack by saying that something “doesn’t add up,” argued on Sunday night that “the worst thing about this is withholding this information so long. That’s what leads to speculation.” 

“Just release the tape,” host Dan Bongino agreed, adding, “It just invites cloak and dagger stuff when you don’t do it.” 

This is ridiculous. The problem isn’t the authorities’ response to the massive, well-funded right-wing media machine that makes up garbage for political gain. It’s that that machine is flourishing. If it can turn a story about the brutal assault of the Democratic leader’s spouse by a right-wing conspiracy theorist into a new right-wing conspiracy theory, that apparatus can do it to anyone and with anything.

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