Internet blasts GOP Congresswoman for sharing “cruel” anti-LGBTQ meme about Paul Pelosi attack

A Republican Congresswoman got so much backlash online when she mocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband Paul Pelosi for getting beaten with a hammer and hospitalized that she turned off the replies to her tweets to avoid further criticism.

This past Friday, a man broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home and attacked Paul Pelosi. He asked “Where’s Nancy?” before he beat Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Paul Pelosi was able to call 911 and he was hospitalized following the brutal attack.

Police soon arrested David DePape in connection with the attack, and Republicans immediately claimed that he was in fact a gay hippie who was Paul Pelosi’s secret lover (or a sex worker, in some re-tellings) and that the attack was actually a drunken fight. Conservative media falsely reported that DePape was arrested in just his underwear and the far-right Santa Monica Observer made up a fictional account of the relationship between DePape and Paul Pelosi that Twitter CEO Elon Musk later shared on that platform.

Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

One image being shared as “proof” that DePape is secretly leftist is of a house in Berkeley, California with a rainbow cannabis flag in front of it, which they claim DePape is “connected” to (The New Yorker provides the full description of the Byzantine story that possibly connects DePape to the house).

AdBridg.cmd.push(function() { AdBridg.display("div-gpt-ad-inarticle2"); });

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) posted a picture of the house that had been photoshopped to include five white men in shorts with short haircuts holding oversized hammers in front of the house. If one peruses the comments under the image, one would find that many conservatives believe that these men are what gay men generally look like.

“LOL,” Tenney wrote in sharing the image.

.@claudiatenney posted this remarkably cruel tweet laughing at the brutal beating of her colleague's husband and then when people started dragging her for it, she turned off the replies instead of deleting. Cowardly. pic.twitter.com/n983b03etF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2022

Tenney faced harsh criticism for joking about the attack that put the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi in intensive care.

An elderly man, a grandfather, who holds no public office, is brutally attacked in his own home and your response is this? Could you have even imagined that you would become so partisan that this would be how you carry yourself in the world? Where are all the kind people?

— Elisa (@ginkowest) November 1, 2022

You are disgusting. You don't deserve the honor of serving in congress. Resign.

— Alan Marshall (@Alan_L_Marshall) November 1, 2022

I’ve reported your disgusting tweet.

MAGA = violence

Pass it on.

— Bathsheba Dreams in Blue