Media Rush to Assign Blame after Attack on Paul Pelosi

The media have been quick to assign blame after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was violently attacked in the couple’s San Francisco home last week. According to the attacker’s now-imprisoned former girlfriend, he is a mentally ill drug addict who believed for a time that he was Jesus Christ. But for much of the media, the obvious role that addiction and mental illness played in the tragic attack is secondary to the real cause: Republicans and their extreme rhetoric.

A man broke into the couple’s home early Friday morning and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Pelosi underwent “successful surgery” for a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hand. Authorities have identified the suspect as David Wayne DePape, a 42-year-old man who appears to have a history of affiliations with nudists and conspiracy theorists. 

As NR’s Ryan Mills has reported, DePape’s political leanings are not easily discernible. He has ranted against Covid lockdowns and government censorship on his blog but, according to journalist Michael Schellenberger, he also at one point “lived with a notorious local nudist in a Berkeley home, complete with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree.” 

The nudist, DePape’s former girlfriend and the mother of his children, said they were aligned in their commitment to progressivism when they were together.