On June 14, 2017, Congressman Steve Scalise, practicing baseball with other Republicans, was shot and grievously wounded by “a leftwing political activist with a record of domestic violence.”
Democrats did not joke about this incident, or deny the basic facts about the shooting, or invent a fictional narrative to compete with the basic facts. Nancy Pelosi denounced the violence unequivocally:
This morning, the U.S. Congress suffered a despicable and cowardly attack. My thoughts and prayers are with Whip Steve Scalise and the others wounded, Capitol Police and staff, and their families.
We are profoundly grateful for the heroism of the Capitol Police, whose bravery under fire undoubtedly saved countless lives. On days like today, there are no Democrats or Republicans, only Americans united in our hopes and prayers for the wounded.
On October 28, 2022, Paul Pelosi, spouse of Speaker Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer to the skull by a man immersed in right-wing conspiracy theories “about Covid vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
While a few Republicans have forthrightly condemned the attack, numerous others have offered jokes about the attack, or fabricated stories about the shooting, or grasped at these stories (from sources that offer not a shred of evidence) to raise questions about the accounts presented by law enforcement. The world's richest man and the leader of the Grand Old Party have both spread falsehoods by raising questions.
The Republican reaction suggests, in Annie Karni's words, they believe
they will pay no political price for attacks on their opponents, however meanspirited, inflammatory or false.
If anything, some Republicans seem to believe they will be rewarded by their right-wing base for such coarseness — or even suffer political consequences if they do not join in and show that they are in on the joke.
It is plain as day that Republicans, who have made a fetish out of guns in campaign ads and tweets, have a tougher time condemning political violence than do Democrats. To do so would be to repudiate a critical Republican voting bloc. In the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, when a mob tried to stop certification of the election of Joe Biden as president, Republicans denounced the violence and even their leader in the White House. But by spring 2021, when Donald Trump was impeached for a second time, the party refused to hold him accountable. By July 2021, they had manufactured a fraudulent narrative: the rioters were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights and those in jail, awaiting trial, were “political prisoners.”
The man with a hammer, under the spell of lies and conspiracy theories and the glorification of violence, had asked, in an echo of the January 6 insurrectionists, "Where's Nancy?" The big lie metastasized into more lies, which have led inevitably to political violence.
Ben Collins observed that in the aftermath of the attack, the pro-Trump internet manufactured a false reality. "They were writing fan fiction about the most embarrassing thing that could have happened in the Pelosi house that night in their eyes for Paul Pelosi.... Some sort of gay love-plot thing that they have invented for themselves. And then when the real narrative came out... they refused to accept it," rejecting the account of law enforcement (and the attacker's confession). This narrative, invented and spread on 4Chan and Truth Social, soon reached Fox News, as their anchors mused, Things just don't add up. They're just asking the question. And then Donald Trump joined the questioning chorus.
Collins continues:
All those things that I read on 4Chan on Saturday morning -- those are the things that are coming out of people who run the GOP right now, both through their media apparatus and through official party lines.
... People keep saying, What about Steve Scalise? And that's true. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional softball game. Nobody created a secondary story that denied the reality of that happening. Nobody gloated about it.... Barack Obama did not laugh at this. There was none of that at the time.
We have to be clear about what's happening here: One side is agitating for violence, the violence happens, they deny it's them, and then they say, Even if it was us, we would've been proud of it anyway.
Nicolle Wallace asked Charlie Sykes why he has described this episode as a turning point. His reply:
This has been a decade coming when you think about it. From Sandy Hook to Pizzagate to Covid denialism to Charlottesville to the big lie about the election. We have seen this building attack on objective truth as a political weapon.
And I do feel it is a turning point, because here you have this horrendous, vicious attack on an 82-year old man who has had his skull fractured. And rather than, you know, everybody taking a deep breath and saying, Okay, maybe we need to sober up--
What Ben is describing is absolutely our new political reality. They have invented this lulls fiction about some sort of a homosexual tryst. Why did they go there? Why did they reach into the QAnon book that there’s some sort of thing going on in Nancy Pelosi’s house?
But even when we have the confession, even now when we have the black and white statements, the recorded statements from the perpetrator, it is not making a difference. The truth cannot catch up with these lies because the lies are so deeply embedded and they are so deeply invested.
And the people that ought to be pushing back against them have once again decided they’re not going to speak up.
So when I say we’re at a turning point, we keep asking, What if there’s an assassination? What if there’s a terrible act of violence? What will happen then?
Well, it has happened. And what we are seeing is the Republican Party and members of the right-wing media are utterly unfazed and they’re prepared to go along with it….
As I've observed repeatedly over the past two years: There is never a bridge too far for Republican leaders in their quest for political power. They may balk initially. But then they get on board with the lies and, eventually, with the violence.