Friday’s brutal assault on Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, at their San Francisco dwelling was overtly political — and a logical endpoint to the many years of deeply private villainization Speaker Pelosi has weathered from her political opponents.

It’s now clear the speaker was the goal of Friday’s assault. The assailant broke into the house searching for her, reportedly shouting, “The place is Nancy?” — echoing what insurrectionists referred to as out after they breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and saying that he would wait “till Nancy received dwelling” as he tried to tie up Paul Pelosi. The speaker’s husband suffered a cranium fracture and severe accidents to his proper arm and palms that required surgical procedure after the assailant bludgeoned him with a hammer. (A spokesperson for the speaker mentioned in a assertion that Paul Pelosi is predicted to make a full restoration.)

Republicans have dismissed any connection between their rhetoric and the assault. As an alternative, they’ve blamed Democratic insurance policies on crime and instructed that rising political violence could also be the results of common nervousness round election legitimacy. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who was cheered by Republicans when he purchased Twitter final week, has superior a right-wing anti-LGBTQ conspiracy principle across the circumstances of the assault. Although he deleted his submit, it remained on Twitter lengthy sufficient to be amplified and repeated by many on the suitable.

Even earlier than Pelosi turned speaker, Republicans within the celebration and people adjoining to it have demonized her frequently, that includes her in assault adverts and lambasting her on Fox Information. At the very least one in all her colleagues within the Home, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), has straight indicated help for violence towards her. And members of right-wing militia teams such because the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters have sought her assassination.

Police haven’t gone into additional element concerning the attacker’s motivations, however his Fb posts on conspiracy theories round Covid-19 vaccines, the 2020 election, and the January 6 assault present a window into his radicalization. Different weblog posts underneath his identify contained screeds towards minorities, politicians, ladies, and world elites, and content material associated to QAnon — the false pro-Trump conspiracy principle {that a} cabal of Devil-worshipping pedophiles, together with distinguished Democrats like Pelosi, are working the world.

None of these posts reference Pelosi particularly, however all of them intersect with the methods she has been a well-recognized goal of the suitable — and never simply on the political fringes.

The lengthy historical past of Republicans demonizing Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi has been villainized by Republicans since she first ascended to Democratic management.

In 2003, inside days of her election as Home Minority Chief, she rapidly confronted gendered assaults from Republicans who have been, as Mark Z. Barabak wrote for the Los Angeles Instances on the time: “wanting to assault Pelosi as a crazy San Francisco liberal and exploit her metropolis’s repute because the odd-sock drawer of America. Inside days, her face — garish and twisted — confirmed up in an assault advert slamming the Democrat in a Louisiana Home race. (He received anyway.) She surfaced as Miss America, full with tiara, in a spoof on Rush Limbaugh’s Site.”

Such assaults continued all through her tenure as minority chief, together with throughout the 2006 election when Republicans ran a swath of assault adverts that includes unflattering pictures of Pelosi typically wanting indignant, bug-eyed, or startled. They usually elevated in 2010, after she had turn out to be speaker. Republicans made her the face of their assaults on Democrats’ Inexpensive Care Act and launched a “Fireplace Pelosi” marketing campaign, which concerned a bus tour and pictures of Pelosi engulfed in flames.

Beneath the Trump period and within the years since, the assaults have solely escalated in tenor. Former President Donald Trump, who has remained silent concerning the assault on Paul Pelosi, shared doctored movies of the speaker designed to name into query her psychological health, retweeted accusations that she was “ingesting booze on the job,” and had a litany of derogatory nicknames for her, amongst them “Loopy Nancy,” “Nervous Nancy,” and “Nancy Antoinette.”

A lot of Trump’s followers echoed his rhetoric, on-line and in conservative media equivalent to Fox Information. In 2021, Fox Information host Mark Levin referred to as her “a nasty outdated bag — that’s what she is, a nasty, vicious, unhinged idiot” who “has the hots for Trump” and “can’t get Trump out of her head.”

Rhetoric involving Pelosi has typically taken violent turns as nicely. In 2018 and 2019, Taylor Greene repeatedly appeared to recommend help for Pelosi’s execution, amongst that of different distinguished Democrats, liking a Fb submit that mentioned “a bullet to the top” can be essentially the most expedient method to finish Pelosi’s speakership. Taylor Greene additionally claimed in a Fb video that Pelosi was responsible of treason, noting “a criminal offense punishable by loss of life is what treason is.”

One candidate within the GOP major for Senate in Arizona this 12 months aired a Tremendous Bowl advert that featured him dressed as sheriff taking pictures down an actor enjoying Pelosi, recognized as “Loopy Face Pelosi,” after he says, “The nice folks of Arizona have had sufficient of you.” Within the interval since Labor Day, Republicans have reportedly since spent practically $40 million on adverts that point out Pelosi.

Final week, Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Emmer (R-MN) posted a video of himself firing a gun with the hashtag #FirePelosi. And even on Friday, simply hours after the assault, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin linked the assault on Pelosi’s husband to the November election, drawing condemnation from Democrats who referred to as the feedback insensitive.

“There’s no room for violence anyplace, however we’re going to ship [Pelosi] again to be with him in California,” Youngkin mentioned at a marketing campaign rally in Stafford for GOP congressional candidate Yesli Vega.

Fox Information anchors have additionally tried to tie the assault to Republicans’ message on crime within the midterms. “This may occur anyplace. Crime is random and that’s why it’s such a major a part of this election story,” Fox anchor Invoice Hemmer mentioned on air Friday. Republican Nationwide Committee chair Ronna McDaniel echoed that speaking level on Fox Information Sunday, saying, “If this weren’t Paul Pelosi, this felony would in all probability be out on the road tomorrow … That is what Democrat insurance policies are bringing.”

Different Republicans — together with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, chair of the GOP’s Senate marketing campaign arm — denounced the assault, however argued towards Republicans having a key position in fomenting the conspiracy theories of the attacker. Scott appeared to recommend the assault was rooted in a common lack of public confidence in elections.

“I feel what we’ve got to do is, one, we’ve got to sentence the violence, after which we’ve got to do every thing we are able to to get folks — make sure that folks really feel snug about these elections,” he mentioned Sunday on CNN.

The vilification of Pelosi has taken an excellent uglier type in extremely right-wing circles on-line. Conspiracy theories just like the one shared by Musk abound, and even Republican members of Congress are spreading misinformation:

Some on Trump’s social media platform Reality Social have additionally been brazenly celebrating the assault, with the hashtag #PelosiCrimeFamily trending over the weekend.

Arguably the present venom aimed toward Pelosi wouldn’t exist with out the many years of Republican vitriol towards her. President Joe Biden made that connection express at a fundraising dinner Friday in Philadelphia, saying that political violence is the pure consequence of the form of rhetoric that Republicans have enabled. “What makes us suppose that it’s not going to corrode the political local weather?” he requested.

Misogyny, anti-elitism, and anti-democratic concepts characteristic closely in assaults on Pelosi

As the primary feminine speaker of the Home, and one serving at a time of accelerating political polarization and anti-democratic violence, Pelosi has confronted uniquely intense assaults which have channeled right-wing anger about her gender, wealth, and pro-democratic rhetoric.

Even when she first ran for Congress, Republicans sought to painting her as unserious, a “liberal dilettante” and “airhead” — insults that ring of sexism.

In 2007, conservative discuss radio host Rush Limbaugh mocked her election to the speakership: “This can be a triumph of feminism and estrogen. … And women, the lengthy 200-year nationwide nightmare with no lady on the high is now over.” In 2009, Democrats accused Republicans of advancing antiquated attitudes towards ladies after they ran an advert suggesting that Pelosi ought to be put “in her place” on the difficulty of Afghanistan. And in 2014, a Republican member instructed that she “would possibly wish to strive” doing her analysis on the border, feedback that her Democratic colleagues took to be patronizing and sexist.

Pelosi doesn’t speak about her gender a lot, however from time to time has identified the disparate therapy and distinctive assaults she’s confronted as a girl in congressional management. As an illustration, amid questions in 2014 about her age and whether or not she ought to hand the mantle to a successor, she retorted that then-Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell, who’s simply two years youthful than her, ought to be fielding comparable questions. And in 2018, after being demonized by Trump and the GOP and nonetheless successful the speakership, she advised CNBC, “I don’t need ladies to suppose for those who get attacked, you run away.”

The assaults towards Pelosi over time have additionally targeted on her wealth. On the suitable, there have lengthy been harsh critiques of “elites,” typically stoked by Fox Information; more and more, as my colleague Andrew Prokop not too long ago defined, influential members of the suitable argue an “elite left ‘ruling class’ has captured and is ruining America, and that drastic measures are essential to battle again towards them.”

For a lot of — together with one January 6 rioter and recruiter for the antigovernment motion The Three Percenters — Pelosi is the face of that “evil” ruling class. And she or he’s typically been attacked as one in all that class’s most hypocritical members. She’s confronted criticism for initially dismissing the concept that members of Congress and their relations shouldn’t be allowed to commerce shares, even though they’ve entry to confidential intelligence.

It’s a critique that was notably intense given she is among the richest members of Congress, with an estimated internet price of at the least $46 million, and that fortune has grown partly because of profitable trades by Paul Pelosi, a enterprise capitalist. She later endorsed laws that will make it tougher for members of Congress to make use of info they obtain on the job for their very own monetary achieve, but it surely at the moment appears unlikely to move.

Paradoxically, Trump attacked Pelosi for her wealth and elite standing a lot of occasions; maybe most notably, he sought to make use of her wealth to painting her as out of contact in a 2020 marketing campaign advert ridiculing her costly fridge stuffed with ice cream whereas Individuals have been going hungry throughout the Covid-related financial downturn.

Each the sexist and anti-elite traces of assault have straight fed into the anti-democratic assaults which have not too long ago overshadowed the remaining. She was a high goal throughout the January 6 rebellion, when the mob tore aside her workplace, calling out her identify and trying to find her. Rioters, emboldened by Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, left little question as to what they’d have executed to her: “We did our half. We have been searching for Nancy to shoot her within the frickin’ mind. However we didn’t discover her,” one lady mentioned in a selfie video.

After the rebellion was put down, Pelosi declared that “democracy received.” However it’s clear that pro-Trump extremists like the person who broke into her home Friday aren’t keen to surrender the battle.

Replace, October 31, 2022, 1:40 pm ET: This story, initially revealed on October 29, has been up to date to mirror Republicans’ newest responses to the assault and the unfold of conspiracy theories associated to the incident.