Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pushed back on “unfair” efforts to link GOP candidate’s heated rhetoric ahead of next week’s midterm elections to the vicious assault on Paul Pelosi.
McDaniel made the comments after being asked on Fox News Sunday to respond to accusations from some Democrats that Friday’s attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) elderly husband was fueled in part by Republicans’ spirited campaign rhetoric. Anchor Shannon Bream referenced a Washington Post op-ed calling the assault an “all-but-inevitable conclusion” of the GOP’s “increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric toward their political opponents.”
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“Well, I think that’s unfair. I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said. “You can’t say people saying ‘Let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘Let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘Go do violence.’ It’s just unfair.” The RNC chairwoman, who condemned the assault after news of it circulated on Friday, added that “we all need to recognize violence is up across the board” before mentioning the attack on Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), New York’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, at a campaign event this summer and the assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Democrats, McDaniel argued, did not show the same level of outrage over those incidents. “Joe Biden didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh,” she said.
McDaniel then took a dig at Democrats’ crime policies before offering her well wishes to Paul Pelosi, who remains hospitalized following surgery for a fractured skull caused by the violent assault.
“I think the only thing to remember is, if this weren’t Paul Pelosi, this criminal would probably be out on the street tomorrow. We saw Lee Zeldin’s attacker was on the street right after he attacked him. This is what Democratic policies are bringing,” the RNC chairwoman said. “But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery. We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”
Paul Pelosi’s suspected attacker, identified as David DePape, has made a number of online posts referencing the QAnon conspiracy theory. However, he had not written anything about the Pelosis specifically. Despite this, and despite him not being previously known to the Capitol Police, San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott said Friday that this was not a random incident.
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“This was not a random act. This was intentional. And it’s wrong,” Scott told reporters Friday night, claiming families of elected officials “don’t sign up for this — to be harmed. And it is wrong. And everybody should be disgusted about what happened.”
Republicans across the board, with the notable exception of former President Donald Trump, have denounced the attack on Pelosi, and many centrist lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for tamping down heated political rhetoric. Other elected officials, however, have opted to bicker and point fingers at the other side for the level of political divisions.
