In an interview with Fox News Host Tucker Carlson, right-wing journalist Jason Whitlock mocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband Paul after the latter was brutally attacked in his home with a hammer.
A man broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in October and asked “Where’s Nancy?” before he beat Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Paul Pelosi was able to call 911 and he was hospitalized following the brutal attack.
Police soon arrested David DePape in connection with the attack, and Republicans immediately claimed that he was in fact a gay hippie who was Paul Pelosi’s secret lover (or a sex worker, in some re-tellings) and that the attack was actually a drunken fight. Conservative media falsely reported that DePape was arrested in just his underwear and the far-right website Santa Monica Observed made up a fictional account of the relationship between DePape and Paul Pelosi.
In his conversation with Carlson, Whitlock declares, “I’m outraged for Nancy Pelosi. This woman has taken the hard-earned money she’s made from insider trading and invested in a pair of cans at 82 years old and comes home to find out that her husband’s playing hide the hammer with a Black Lives Matter guy.”
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Whitlock was referring to the conservative conspiracy theory that DePape is not only Paul Pelosi’s gay lover, but also a promoter of progressive causes like Black Lives Matter.
“You talk about disrupting the nuclear family. The Black Lives Matter crew must be ecstatic because this guy’s doing it and so is Paul Pelosi. I’m upset for Nancy. She spent her hard-earned money on a pair of cans and he’s not interested.”
Carlson laughed along as Whitlock spoke.
Carlson also stated he could not confirm or deny Whitlock’s accusations but said he noticed that once people started speculating about what happened to Paul Pelosi, liberals on Twitter were apparently disgusted that conservatives would suggest, as Carlson put it, “there was anything alternative going on.”
“I thought they were defenders of the alternative,” Carlson said. “When did that become immoral in the eyes of the Democratic party?”
Whitlock replied, “Tucker, I don’t want to put you in a tough spot, but I gotta correct you again. Are you suggesting that my information that she spent her money on a pair of cans, are you saying that’s bad information?”
“I’ve seen a lot of evidence, I feel real comfortable, she’s trying to entice her husband but he’s interested in playing hide the hammer on a Friday night with some weirdo. I think there’s an issue. This is what needs to be investigated. This is the whole end game for Black Lives Matter. Disrupting the nuclear family starting with the Speaker of the House.”
Whitlock was so proud of this exchange that he pinned a video of the interview to the top of his Twitter profile.
just pure unvarnished misogyny and homophobia on Tucker Carlson's show pic.twitter.com/A61GRKjjyQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2022
Conservatives have continued to mock the brutal attack against Pelosi’s husband.
One image being shared as “proof” that DePape is secretly leftist is of a house in Berkeley, California with a rainbow cannabis flag in front of it, which they claim DePape is “connected” to.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) posted a picture of the house that had been photoshopped to include five white men in shorts with short haircuts holding oversized hammers in front of the house. If one peruses the comments under the image, one would find that many conservatives believe that these men are what gay men generally look like.
“LOL,” Tenney wrote in sharing the image. Instead of taking down the image after criticism, Tenney blocked further responses.
Twitter owner Elon Musk shared the article from the far-right Santa Monica Observed that contained the detailed and mostly fictional account of the attack that claimed DePape and Paul Pelosi met in a gay nightclub. Musk later deleted the tweet, but many on the right appear to still believe that the story had some validity.
People on the platform called Musk out for spreading the misinformation in the first place and for not apologizing or tweeting a correction so that his millions of followers wouldn’t believe a baseless story that amounted to blaming the attack on San Francisco’s LGBTQ community.
The suggestion that Musk did anything wrong by spreading misinformation set anti-LGBTQ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) off.
“The same mainstream media democrat activists that sold conspiracy theories for years about President Trump and Russia are now blaming Elon Musk for ‘internet misinformation’ about Paul Pelosi’s friend attacking him with a hammer,” she tweeted, referring to DePape as Paul Pelosi’s “friend.”
And Donald Trump Jr. retweeted someone who posted a photo of a pair of underwear and a hammer and called it their “Paul Pelosi Halloween costume.”
“The internet remains undefeated,” Trump Jr. wrote.
Despite many on the right insisting that DePape is queer and that his attack on Paul Pelosi was part of a lovers’ quarrel, DePape told investigators that his intention was to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps so that she would have to “be wheeled into Congress, which would show other members of Congress that there were consequences to actions.”
The probable cause warrant says that DePape’s intended target is believed to be Nancy Pelosi, which is why he is facing a charge of assaulting a family member of a U.S. official, with the intent to retaliate against the official for doing their duties. The charge could get him 30 years in prison.
DePape’s social media history shows that he believed in numerous conservative conspiracy theories, like QAnon, that the COVID-19 vaccines kill people, and the idea that the war in Ukraine is a plot for Jewish people to buy land. He also shared images mocking transgender people.
He shared links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”
