Republicans Bravely Stand By Homophobic Paul Pelosi Narrative, Video Footage Be Damned

Yes, they're still trying.

On Friday, The San Francisco Superior Court released the body cam footage and 911 audio from the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul in their home in October of last year. Shockingly (to some), the video does not show Paul Pelosi and attacker David DePape having a sexually charged hammer fight, but rather an obviously unwell man holding another man hostage in his own home in the middle of the night and subsequently bashing him over the head with a hammer.

Video shows moment of Paul Pelosi attack    www.youtube.com 

In the video, DePape is practically giggly as police ask him to put down the hammer, but snaps when Pelosi goes to wrest it from him and, off camera, bashes him in the head with it before getting taken down by the police.

In the 911 call, Pelosi is clearly doing a "We're all your friends, please don't murder me" schtick, giving the operator details of what was going on without upsetting DePape, who told the operator that he was a friend of the Pelosis while Paul Pelosi reiterated that he did not know DePape. Although the operator seemed a bit daft, he made it weird enough that she must have gotten the point and sent the police over. It was exactly the right move. The kind of hysterics that people would have found "believable" would likely have gotten him killed.

JUST IN: 911 Audio From Night Of Paul Pelosi Hammer Attack Released    www.youtube.com 

DePape's lawyers argued against the release of the tapes, saying that it would do irreparable damage to his ability to receive a fair trial — but if anything, it gives him a pretty good basis for an insanity plea. He's clearly not well.

From the moment the story hit the news in October, it was obvious that yet another mentally unwell person had taken right-wing talking points and conspiracies very seriously and turned to violence as a solution. We'd all seen the movie before. There have been God knows how many crimes linked to belief in QAnon and other right-wing conspiracy theories over the last few years.

The Right freaked out and, as they usually do when it is very obvious that someone has taken their nonsense to its logical conclusion, immediately started collaborating on an alternate scenario that "could" have happened and would leave them blameless. They heard the detail that Pelosi was in his underwear, which lead them to speculate that DePape was Pelosi's secret gay lover and they were simply having a hammer fight, as gay couples are known to do. They heard other details of his life and determined that actually, he was probably antifa and a supporter of Black Lives Matter.

Even DePape's son got in on it, telling the press that his father, who he had not seen in many years, had never been a conservative Republican and that it was more likely that he was the Pelosis' sex slave. 

But no, none of that was true, as became clear from what DePape wrote online and was more than happy to tell investigators after he was Mirandized. He had been radicalized by Gamergate and eventually became very upset about communists and "woke" people and wanted to teach Democrats a lesson by breaking Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps, forcing her to go to work in a wheelchair. This, he believed, would show other members of Congress that there were “consequences to actions.”

From his affidavit:  

DEPAPE stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DEPAPE the “truth,” he would let her go, and if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps.” DEPAPE was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth.” In the course of the interview, DEPAPE articulated he viewed Nancy as the “leader of the pack” of lies told by the Democratic Party. DEPAPE also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. DEPAPE also explained generally that he wanted to use Nancy to lure another individual to DEPAPE.

Nice guy!

So, has this new evidence convinced any on the Right that they were perhaps wrong about what happened? Of course it has not.

On Fox News, guest Brian Claypool really, really tried it. He tried it so hard. He asked all of the questions he claimed "No one wants to talk about."

Like "Did Paul Pelosi know this guy? Because it is a bit weird, you saw a picture ... Paul had a drink in his left hand. And I'm not disrespecting him, but it looked almost casual in some respect. Both hands are on the hammer. Was Paul able to just let his hand go and run out the front door? And then another issue you've got is the 911 call. Paul in the 911 call is kind of passively in fear. It didn't sound like he was really fearing for his life. They were having a two-minute 50 second discussion, and in that, DePape said that he did know Pelosi, Pelosi said he doesn't know him."

Fox guest's Paul Pelosi conspiracy debunked in real time    www.youtube.com 

To her credit, host Sandra Smith gave him no small amount sideways asking him if he perhaps could see that as Pelosi trying to keep the attacker calm, and notes the clear footage of DePape breaking through the glass window with the hammer, while showing said footage on the screen. Claypool then says that all he wants is transparency and that he'd love to discuss this more but surely they have to move onto something else. They did not! Hosts Sandra Smith and John Roberts encouraged him to continue.

"Where is the evidence of a breaking and entering?" Claypool, a defense attorney, then asked. "I get what you're saying Sandra about how he's casing the area..."

"There's video of him breaking through the house ... I assume it's with the hammer that you later see him with" Smith responds, as the video of DePape breaking into the house plays on a loop on the screen.

"Yeah, okay," responded a broken, word salading Claypool. "But can't we talk more about 'What is the DOJ doing?' Are we supposed to just give a hall pass on such an important fact, that to me, I think, I think there was a clear narrative that the DOJ wanted to propagate in this, and we've been going through this with other cases. It was the Hunter Biden thing, with the Mar-a-lago search warrant. I think that's to me the biggest take away. Why is there not truth in what happened with that entry?

Roberts suggested that we do have some idea, because of how the footage shows him going into the house through the window he just broke.

The part where Claypool is confused is that he wants there to be a story in there somewhere about how Pelosi and this man were having a torrid sex affair and there is simply no evidence for that. This appears to be what has frustrated conservatives across the internet, who just know that this must be what happened.

The same theories rolled out on the Great Awakening QAnon message board, where they all remained very committed to this narrative. They want their sexually charged gay hammer fight and they are not giving up.

[H]ilarious that a yahoo article had commenters acting as if they were right. Answering the door while holding hands with a man and a hammer in his underwear. Both looked glassy eyed drugged out of their minds. If the dude wanted to beat pelosi with a hammer he would have done it well before the police arrived.

He probably got pissed that Paul called the cops on him after they railed each other.

Yes, because that is a thing people do after sex. They have sex, then one of them calls the cops, the other gets pissed and then when the police come, one of them smashes the other's head in with a hammer.

I'm just gonna put it out there that if there were indeed a scenario in which Paul Pelosi, a very wealthy man who lives in San Francisco, truly needed a secret male gigolo sidepiece, he could certainly do better than David DePape, a random crazy dude who is not even remotely attractive.

They want this to be true, desperately, for the same reason they want mass shootings to not be about guns that make it very easy to conduct mass shootings. They want the "upside" to their bullshit where they get people riled and ready to vote Republican and hate the Left and buy food buckets without the obvious downside of people actually believing their bullshit and trying to do something about it.

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