Why Wasn’t the Attempted Murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh a Top National Headline?
Imagine police arrested a man found near Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s home, dressed in a MAGA hat, wearing black clothing, carrying a suitcase and backpack with weapons that included a Glock 17 with two magazines and ammunition, a tactical knife, pepper spray, a hammer, a screwdriver, a crowbar, zip ties and duct tape. And the man said he wanted to kill Sotomayor. We don’t have to imagine. After the attempted murder of Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011, the entire national conversation became about how high profile federal government leaders weren’t safe from rightwing extremists with blame for the tragedy placed directly on the head and rhetoric of former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Blaming Palin was shameless but also not true. It wasn’t even clear the shooter was rightwing and it still isn’t. But those two lies sure as hell fit the narrative the media wanted. So this week when a man was arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home, who told police he wanted to kill a Supreme Court judge, who also, according to the Washington Post, “wore black clothing and carried a suitcase and backpack with weapons and other supplies, including a Glock 17 with two magazines and ammunition, a tactical knife, pepper spray, a hammer, a screwdriver, a crowbar, zip ties and duct tape, along with other gear, according to court documents…” Why wasn’t this a top national headline EVERYWHERE? To be fair, no physical harm came to Kavanaugh, unlike Mrs. Giffords who was shot and barely survived. Also, almost every major news outlet I’m aware of ran a story on Kavanaugh’s attempted murder. But most major news outlets did not make it a top story - or anything remotely close to it. https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1534894840936386560 There was no analysis or pondering by the center-left media as to which pundit or political figure could have inspired the threat against Kavanaugh, as was done to Palin and more recently Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in the wake of the white supremacist shooting tragedy in Buffalo New York. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1534549135004770304 No one - outside of an army of Republicans and right-leaning influencers and pundits - was asking if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had inspired the threat against Kavanaugh by saying he would “pay the price” for possibly helping overturn Roe v. Wade. https://twitter.com/RepAndyBiggsAZ/status/1535032044375494664 https://twitter.com/jimantle/status/1534688830049202176 https://twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1534694544918429699 To note, Palin was blamed for supposedly inciting Giffords’ attacker by saying certain Democratic seats were “targeted” through her political PAC and using bullseye graphics. As if “targeting” a district had not been common political speech for Left and Right since before Palin was born. Perhaps Schumer’s rhetoric, too, has been taken out of context. At least one progressive pundit made a point to say precisely that. https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1534663660261580805 Mind you, Chait is the same lefty who once theorized that former President Donald Trump might have been a secret Russian double agent since the 1980s—which is Alex Jones-level cartoon buffoonery. But Chait was also one of the few - the very few and maybe just him - who called the left out over a decade ago in their attacks on Palin over the Giffords incident. I could have left that part out about Chait to make this column more ideologically pleasing to many of our right-leaning readers, but at BASEDPolitics we stick to the facts and Chait deserves credit for standing up to the progressive mob all those years ago as a matter of integrity, journalistic or otherwise. The reason someone trying to murder a conservative Supreme Court Justice did not make a bigger splash this week is because it didn’t fit a Left narrative. In fact, because the suspect appeared to be a leftwing crazy inspired by the posible overturning of Roe, his targeting of Kavanaugh ran counter to the prevailing Democratic orthodoxy that America is full of rightwing terrorists inspired by Trump as evidenced by the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Of which congressional hearings on are being held this week. Guess which story you can find EVERYWHERE right now and you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to? https://twitter.com/jackhunter74/status/1534932280573050882
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