Predictably, the outrage carried over into Tuesday, when Pelosi’s comments were discussed on a number of Fox News shows including Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends First, Outnumbered, and Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.
On Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy mocked Pelosi’s comments, suggesting that Democrats are lying about Trump’s stated push to make mail-in voting less accessible. Guest Newt Gingrinch responded by referencing right-wing author Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds, saying that Pelosi “is a perfect example of the madness of her crowd.”
But bringing in Gingrich -- himself no stranger to heated rhetoric -- to discuss how supposedly outrageous Pelosi’s comments were perfectly illustrates how fake the Republican outrage is in this instance. And it provides clarity about the segment’s actual goal of obscuring the legitimate concerns Pelosi expressed about Republican efforts to suppress the vote.
In a 1994 interview, Gingrich said, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil around me every day.” In 1990, Gingrich and his political action committee GOPAC sent Republicans a list of “contrasting words” he recommended using to describe Democrats. The list contained terms like “sick,” “pathetic,” and “traitors.” In resigning from his role as speaker of the House in 1998, Gingrich referred to Democrats as “cannibals.” This list of Gingrich’s incendiary remarks about Democrats goes on and on.
Speakers at the Republican National Convention this week have been just as extreme, playing on the fears of their audiences. Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk called Trump “the bodyguard of western civilization,” suggesting that society would cease to exist in its current form should he lose reelection. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) ranted about how Democrats will “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.” Former Fox News personality and Trump campaign official Kimberly Guilfoyle screamed that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe, so they can control how you live.”
Perhaps Pelosi could have made her point without using terms like “enemies of the state” or “domestic enemies” when describing why she thinks it’s important to fight back against voter suppression, but by focusing on her tone and rhetoric, Pelosi’s detractors are trying to bury the actual substance of what she was talking about. Trump has made no secret that he would like to keep voter turnout in this election as low as possible, and he’s admitted that he’s trying to kneecap the Postal Service to make mail-in voting less available.
Doocy and others in pro-Trump media can pretend that Pelosi and Democrats are promoting a conspiracy theory when they express concern about the state of the post office, but it doesn’t change the reality of the situation. Redirecting discussion about her comments to focus on whether she was too heated in her rhetoric is a conscious strategic move. It’s hard to believe that the media personalities and politicians who dutifully line up behind Trump and his lengthy history of violent rhetoric are being sincere when they claim to be outraged over Pelosi’s comments. They are not neutral observers; they are pro-Trump partisans. Nothing he says will ever cross a line, yet they hold Democratic politicians to arbitrary standards of decency with rules that are made up on the fly.
