Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona Kari Lake has rejected claims she tried to minimize the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, instead blaming the “fake news media” for taking her comments out of context.
Lake came under fire earlier this week after making comments during a candidate rally on Monday about the incident, noting, “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently, her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” However, the Republican candidate is now saying her comments were taken out of context with “creative editing,” arguing she never sought to minimize the attack.
BIDEN DRAWS LINE FROM JAN. 6 RIOT TO PAUL PELOSI ATTACK IN PREELECTION DEMOCRACY SPEECH
“I was talking about our children and why they don’t have better security. And I said that our politicians have security and that our athletes have security, and we need to have security,” Lake told the Daily Mail. “Go back and look at the tape and don’t do any creative editing, like the fake media tends to do, and you’ll see what I was saying.”
There is no evidence that Lake’s comments from the rally on Monday were edited.
Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was violently attacked in his San Francisco home last week after a man, identified as David DePape, 42, allegedly broke in to look for the House speaker, according to a federal criminal complaint. During the incident, DePape struck Paul Pelosi with a hammer, causing a skull fracture and serious injuries to his arm and hands, according to a spokesperson for the speaker.
DePape now faces a slew of criminal charges, including attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, and threats to a public official. If convicted, he could face 13 years to life with the charges.
Although some Republicans have mocked the attack, several other high-profile members of the party have denounced the incident. Most notably, former President Donald Trump called the attack a “terrible thing” in an interview on Sunday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have condemned the attack.
However, the two GOP leaders have stayed mostly silent about their party members joking about or downplaying the incident.
The mockery has prompted some Democrats to denounce some GOP candidates who are seeking office in the next Congress, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accusing the party of hypocrisy.
“This midterm election, we’ve seen a lot of ads by Republicans running for everything touting crime. Crime is the issue. But when an 82-year-old man is attacked by an intruder in his own home, they don’t seem to be too bothered by that,” Clinton told MSNBC’s Joy Reid.
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President Joe Biden also responded to the attack, attempting to draw a line between the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the assault of Paul Pelosi — offering it as a warning message to voters ahead of the midterm elections next week.
“This intimidation, this violence against Democrats, Republicans, and nonpartisan officials just doing their job are the consequences of lies told for power and profit,” Biden said during a midterm speech on Wednesday. “Lies of conspiracy and malice. Lies repeated over and over to generate a cycle of anger, hate, vitriol, and even violence. In this moment, we have to confront those lies with the truth.”
