Majorie Taylor Greene at Trump Rally: ‘Paul Pelosi Should’ve Been a Gun Owner’
"The only crime victim you hear about from Democrats in the media is Paul Pelosi," Greene said, egging on boos from the crowd, at a rally in Iowa.
Politics
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who’s openly angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, said at a Trump rally Thursday night that Paul Pelosi could’ve avoided being mauled with a hammer if he’d owned a gun.
“Americans are robbed, stabbed, raped, kidnapped carjacked, and murdered,” Greene said at the rally in Sioux City, Iowa, “but the only crime victim you hear about from Democrats in the media is Paul Pelosi.” The crowd booed.
“Paul Pelosi was brutally attacked by a drugged-out illegal alien that should’ve been deported,” she continued. “And Paul Pelosi should’ve been a gun owner and shot his attacker.”
Greene was referring to the fact that David DePape, the man who allegedly broke into the Pelosis’ home with a plan to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is Canadian and has an expired immigration status.
This is, notably, a very different line of attack from Republicans, many of whom, until now, had been pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi is gay and had invited DePape into his home to have sex. Even Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, tweeted and deleted a story suggesting DePape was hired by Pelosi as a gay prostitute.
DePape has long spouted QAnon bullshit, attacked George Floyd, and posted transphobic content to social media, in line with far-right corners of the internet. But the news that DePape is in the U.S. illegally gave Republicans a convenient pivot point from the obviously false narrative that he was a gay prostitute. Now they can say, OK so Paul Pelosi did not invite this man into his home—we acknowledge that he was attacked by a stranger, but said stranger is an illegal alien! And if Pelosi had a gun, he could’ve defended himself!
Republicans are humiliating themselves by changing the story to whatever narrative best suits their politics—when the reality is that a man inspired by right-wing disinformation made an assassination attempt on a Democratic woman third in line to the presidency.
So while an 82-year-old man is in the hospital getting his skull repaired, a 48-year-old conspiracy theorist is taunting him for not owning an automatic weapon. This is the state of American politics.