House speaker Nancy Pelosi has criticised Republicans for ridiculing the attack on her husband last month, calling it “traumatising” and urging them to stop “mocking political violence”.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the eve of the midterm elections, Ms Pelosi said: “You see what the reaction is on the other side to this, to make a joke of it, and really that is traumatising too.”
On 28 October, Ms Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked in their San Francisco home with a hammer by an intruder who broke in and was looking for the speaker.
The alleged assailant, identified as David DePape, has pleaded not guilty to a spate of state and federal charges stemming from the break-in and hammer assault on the 82-year-old investor.
Ms Pelosi was in Washington DC at the time.
While Republicans in the Congress condemned the attack on Mr Pelosi, several state senators ridiculed it.
Wendy Rogers, a state senator from Arizona, mockingly tweeted an image of a bloody hammer and a fake Amazon posting that the insinuated attack was a hoax.
Virginia’s governor Glenn Youngkin said at a rally for a House candidate: “Speaker Pelosi’s husband had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re gonna send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Lashing out at the mockery of the attack on her husband, Ms Pelosi said to CNN that joking about political violence has to stop.
“In our democracy there is one party that is doubting the outcome of the election, feeding that flame, and mocking any violence that happens. That has to stop.”
She also referred to last January’s Capitol Hill riot, fuelled by former president Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 elections were stolen, and said that Republicans need to stop the spread of disinformation.
“I do think there has to be some message to the Republicans to stop the disinformation,” she said.
“That is without any question a source of what happened on January 6, and the denial of that, and then a source of what’s happening to me now.”
