Pelosi: the blowback

In what follows, please mentally insert ‘alleged’ or ‘allegedly’ in front of every statement. I’m just relaying some of the things I’ve read.

The narrative:

A crazed Trump supporter broke into the Pelosi house in San Francisco and beat Paul Pelosi over the head with a hammer, yelling to know where Nancy was. Pelosi was rescued by police and taken to hospital where he was diagnosed with a fractured skull but thankfully is recovering well.

The perpetrator, 42-year-old David DePape, is a right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-semite whose blog ‘God is Loving’ was suspended by WordPress last Friday for violating its terms of service.

The counter-narrative

Pelosi had been drinking at a gay bar in San Francisco till c. 2 am. Back home again, he went to the bathroom and made a 911 call at 2:32 am and the police arrived two minutes later. I have read one commenter who said the house is usually well-guarded.

They were admitted by a third man who opened the door in his underwear (no, not butt-flap union suit long johns) and saw Pelosi and DePape (both also in their underwear) struggling for possession of a hammer; DePape wrested it free and hit Pelosi.

DePape was formerly a nudist activist and Green Party member who made hemp jewelry.

The tentative conclusion

Politicians and media outlets that chose to make pro-Democratic capital out of this incident in the runup to the midterm elections may wish they had kept quiet.