CNN
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If there was a telling recent moment when it comes to how ugly our political discourse has become, it might well have been the brutal 2022 hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul.
Soon after the attack on the then-82-year-old man, misinformation flowed about Paul Pelosi and the attacker, David DePape. But it wasn’t just right-wing influencers leading the charge; it was also the likes of then-former President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and a coterie of prominent Republicans.
These theories generally held or winked at the idea that the attack was a “false flag,” and/or that Paul Pelosi had been engaged in a gay lover’s quarrel – even as he was recovering from nearly being killed.
These claims were baseless and highly suspect at the time, and they were ultimately disproven by audio and video evidence. Musk even offered a brief apology.
But that episode did nothing to dissuade some observers from doing it again. And again.
The lure of quickly politicizing a violent attack with misinformation and speculation has proven more tempting than being circumspect and sensitive about a tragedy.
Some on the modern right apparently can’t allow that someone on their side could be responsible for such violence, so they’ve again leapt to link the attacker to the other side with innuendo and falsehoods.
Today’s example deals with the shootings of two Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers. State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, while state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife are recovering at a hospital.
Authorities are still piecing together evidence on a possible motive, but Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said the attack was a “politically motivated assassination.” The suspect who has now been detained after a manhunt, Vance Boelter, had an apparent hit list of nearly 70 targets. The names on the list, which CNN obtained, are largely Democrats or figures with ties to Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement. A longtime friend, David Carlson, said Boelter is a conservative who supported Trump and opposed abortion rights.
So much remains to be learned about what spurred the attack, and it’s important to wait for more information before drawing definitive conclusions. These incidents are often carried out by disturbed individuals with no neat and tidy political motivation.
But many on the right weren’t about to wait for all that; they tried to attach the shooter to the left – and quick.
They pointed to the fact that Walz in 2019 had appointed Boelter to the state’s Workforce Development Board – a group of business owners who consult lawmakers. (The New York Post described Boelter in a headline as a “former appointee of Tim Walz.”) But such boards, which are numerous in Minnesota, are not particularly high-profile and generally feature a bipartisan cast of characters.
Others suggested Hortman had been targeted because she in May spearheaded a compromise with Republicans under which undocumented adults would no longer be eligible for a state health care program. Hortman last week tearfully recounted voting for that compromise. But the other lawmaker victim this weekend, Hoffman, didn’t vote for it.
Still others pointed to flyers for the anti-Trump “No Kings” protests this weekend that were allegedly found in Boelter’s car, as if he supported those protests. Protest organizers canceled their events out of fear the protesters could be targeted.
Despite the tenuousness of the evidence linking the attack to left-wing politics – and the more-compelling evidence suggesting the opposite – many prominent right-wing figures have quickly cast Boelter as an angry left-winger.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah repeatedly suggested Boelter is not just a leftist but a “Marxist” and linked him to Walz in an X post: “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” Lee also wrote: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Musk, apparently unchastened by the Paul Pelosi situation, also promoted a post linking the shooter to the left, writing, “The far left is murderously violent.”
Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio added in his own X post about the flyers: “The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.”
Donald Trump Jr. on Monday wagered that that shooter “went after someone that didn’t just blindly follow Democrat radical leftist dogma.” He added: “It’s scary stuff, but it seems to all be coming from the left.”
Influencers went even further, with some of the most prominent and recognizable ones suggesting without any evidence that Walz was somehow involved in the attack. “Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?,” asked right-wing figure Mike Cernovich on X.
While these claims have been much more prevalent and firm on the right, Republicans weren’t the only ones leaping to conclusions. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Sunday that the shooter “appears to be a hate-filled right winger” and urged his side not to dance around “MAGA’s legitimization of political violence.”
As noted, there is more evidence for this view than the inverse, but we still don’t know a lot. Murphy has previously cautioned his side about the political perils of being too apolitical soon after school shootings, arguing it cedes the debate and allows people to move on from tragedy without addressing the problem.
To be clear, these Republican lawmakers and conservative influencers aren’t just suggestively raising questions – as their ilk often did with Paul Pelosi’s attackers – they’re suggesting this is a settled issue.
The situation carries echoes of not just the Pelosi attack, but also other recent major acts of political violence in which the right, especially, has leapt to blame others using incomplete or bogus information.
After the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, Republicans including Trump suggested a link to Democrats’ rhetoric, despite the still-opaque picture of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ politics and motivations. Some congressional Republicans suggested law enforcement deliberately jeopardized Trump – something that would be a massive scandal – without evidence.
Many noted Crooks had once donated a small amount to a Democratic-leaning group, but that group has been criticized for misleading fundraising appeals. And Crooks later registered as a Republican and, according to CBS News, unsubscribed from the group’s email list.
After the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, many on the right leapt to claim the attacks were somehow the result of provocateurs or even FBI agents. (Lee himself tweeted about a claim that one rioter was flashing a badge, when in actuality it appeared to be a vape.)
There remains no evidence for these theories. A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general last year found no undercover FBI employees were present on January 6 and that none of the FBI’s confidential human sources present had been “directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
There’s a real question here about how much of this leaping to conclusions is about prominent people getting caught up in fast-spreading misinformation, or whether there’s a deliberate political strategy. Sharing such misinformation is a great way to win engagement and followers – and it also muddies the waters.
Should we one day learn Boelter was indeed a MAGA supporter who targeted Democrats for political reasons, the seeds of doubt about that conclusion will have been planted and fertilized on the right at a crucial, very early stage.
And the price of that is that incidents of political violence could serve to radicalize yet more people against their opponents – and often, the illusion of those opponents’ violent tendencies. And there is evidence that Americans are viewing these incidents more through the lens of politics.
When then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, was shot in 2011, 71% of people in an NBC News poll said the attack was mostly about a “disturbed person” rather than political “rhetoric.”
That number dropped to 46% for the shooting of Republican congressmen at a baseball practice in 2017, to 40% for the attack on Paul Pelosi, then to 37% after the Trump assassination attempt.
Each of these circumstances were different. But the total picture is one of a country that instantly searches for political answers. And at this moment, one side of the aisle is particularly anxious to provide them – no matter how true they are.
