Yesterday Instapundit put a link to Ann Althouse who had a very interesting take on the Paul Pelosi story and how the NYT spun Elon Musk tweet answering Hillary Clinton:
The main thing Musk did there was ding Clinton for throwing out baseless speculation. He was emboldened — just kidding, he seems to have felt emboldened — to swing wildly because he was swinging back at her wild swing. She wielded the hammer of self-serving accusation and he grabbed it and demonstrated how badly you can hurt someone with it.
The article alleges that Mr. Pelosi was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.
Oh, my lord, now the vivid allegation is right there in the NYT. It was fit to print. Why?! Because Musk merely pointed at it in a tweet that was — as I read it — designed to tell Hillary Clinton to back off with the political propaganda.
Mr. Musk’s tweet was later deleted, and it was not immediately clear who had deleted it.
But this is a news story. Musk linked to something, then deleted it. I’m inclined to speculate that the reason the NYT is elevating this story is that the drunk-fight-with-a-male-prostitute story is not beyond the pale. It needs to be rendered toxic so no one will pass it around. Don’t dare say it!
Kurt Schlichter also had a few things to say on the subject:
An official investigation? Yes, please! This is a serious matter, we’re told. After all, the regime media and Democrats such as Ilhan Omar are out there making charges like “A far-right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House and almost killed her husband a year after violent insurrectionists tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol, and the Republican Party’s response is to either ignore it or belittle it.” Heck, Our Democracy is at stake, so the incoming Republican majority must get to the bottom of this alleged act of political violence.
I somehow think the Democrats will be reluctant to help, though Speaker McCarthy should not let any Democrats on the panel in the first place as payback for the 1/6 kangaroo committee. But why not investigate? These are serious charges, albeit from unserious people. Omar, a commie ingrate whose stupidity is exceeded only by her dishonesty, could not resist trying to leverage some cheap advantage from this grody scenario, but she should have passed on strategic if not moral grounds. By trying to place the blame for this on us, she triggered the Streisand Effect just when Democrats least needed to be associated with even more weird nonsense than they are already. Blaming Republicans for what appears to many people to be a sex tryst gone sour guarantees the wrongly accused – us – are going to hammer the Democrats unmercifully about it.
Well there are some obvious questions to be answered. Jim Treacher leads of his piece at Substack with the one most obvious:
The Pelosis are worth somewhere north of $100 million. Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and second in the line of presidential succession. You’re telling me her husband Paul was alone in a house with no security or surveillance cameras? This lunatic David DePape just walked right up to the house and broke in?
In fairness if you told me ten years ago that San Francisco would have “poop maps” I’d have found that pretty unbelievable too.
Those are all interesting takes but the most sensible take on the subject comes from a tweet from Byron York who is the king of sensible takes.
This of course is a good idea if you want to establish the actual facts. This is however why Don Surber believes this is unlikely:
I imposed the 24-hour rule on the attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, on Saturday. Today I impose the 24-year rule because we never will learn the truth because San Francisco’s police are not as depicted by Karl Malden and Michael Douglas a half-century ago. The cops put on this case are political operatives whose duty is to shield the truth from the public.
The left says Trump did this and cites social media posts which conveniently portray the assailant as a QAnon fan, et cetera.
The right says this was a lover’s quarrel.
The suspect was born and raised in Canada.
None of this adds up. Nobody knows outside a few cops and those who were there. Pray for Paul Pelosi and move on. Forget it, Jake. It’s San Fran town.
Now the truth is charges not withstanding I don’t know what actually happened and neither do any of you but I hereby make this prediction: If the 911 audio, officers body cam video, the Toxicological tests the various reports and the camera footage from the Pelosi house and any surrounding cameras in the neighborhood support the media’s narrative then they will all be released pretty soon.
If they are not then I strongly suspect Don Surber’s 24 year rule will kick in, unless the GOP forces the issue as Mr. Schlichter suggests.
Now when it comes down to it regardless of which narrative if any is correct and whatever the fellow was actually doing at the strangely (particularly given how the left has been insisting that there have been an unrelenting wave of right wing violence over the last year) unprotected Pelosi residence assaulting the old man is wrong and we of course hope for his recovery.
This is a story that is generating a lot of buzz but if you want to know what story SHOULD be all over everyone’s tongue it’s this one also via Insty:
IF THEY REALLY NEED HER THERE, IT’S BAD NEWS FOR THE DEMS. IF SHE’S BEING SENT THERE TO KEEP HER OUT OF THE WAY, IT’S BAD NEWS FOR HER. Kamala Harris to stump for Maura Healey, Democrats, at rally Wednesday.
The story proper
The Biden Administration will lend its weight to Attorney General Maura Healey’s campaign again this week, when Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to hold a get out the vote rally in Boston.
“On Wednesday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris will attend a campaign rally in support of the statewide Massachusetts Democratic ticket. Massachusetts voters have the opportunity to make history by electing the first woman as Governor of Massachusetts with Maura Healey, the first all-women executive office team in the country with Healey and Lieutenant Governor nominee Kim Driscoll, and the first Black woman elected statewide in Massachusetts with Attorney General nominee Andrea Campbell,” the Healey campaign announced Sunday night.
Think about this for a second. It’s the final week of the campaign with critical races to defend the Senate and House for the Democrats and the Democrats find it necessary to send the VP to campaign in friggen Massachusetts to help Maura Healey in a race considered so safe for the left that they don’t even bother to list the 25.5 Democrat spread on the two pols they have listed at RCP.
No wonder the left/media would rather go all in on either the “Right winger attacks Pelosi” or “Right Wingers spread Pelosi conspiracy theory” stuff instead.
