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As Calls for Violence Against Elected Officials Mount, Rep. Jackie Speier Weighs In on Where to Go From Here

As threats of violence and actual attacks on public officials reach alarming levels, Speier points to the dangers of social media and a Trump-dominated Republican Party that she says is creating 'a truly vicious cycle.'
Natalia Navarro
Image of Jackie Speier giving a speech in the House of Representatives
US Rep. Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) warns of the alarming escalation of calls for violence and hate-mongering against elected officials by their fellow politicians. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In light of the recent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) joined KQED’s Natalia V. Navarro to share her thoughts on what is behind the unprecedented wave of hate-mongering and calls for violence from elected officials in recent years, and what legislators can do to prevent such attacks in the future.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

NATALIA NAVARRO: Representative Speier, first of all, I imagine you’ve been in touch with Speaker Pelosi over the last few days. What are you hearing from her?

JACKIE SPEIER: Well, I haven’t actually been in touch with her personally. I have communicated with her through text. And I stopped by the hospital and left a card and some flowers. But I have not actually talked with her. I think she has been focused on her family and, obviously, her husband.

What do you think legislators can do to help prevent things like this from happening again?

It really requires a wholesale change in how we do business. The amount of vitriol that is spewed out on social media by members is reprehensible. And it also is why we have the radicalization of persons in the United States who become domestic terrorists. And I don’t think that is hyperbolic when you realize that this particular man [David DePape, 42, alleged attacker of Paul Pelosi] had every intention of maiming, killing, abusing the speaker of the House, who’s third in command. He had zip ties, rope and two hammers. He was hell-bent on being a vicious perpetrator of a heinous crime.

The suspect’s social media posts were filled with conspiracy theories. How concerned should we be about the growth of once-fringe ideas such as QAnon, which incorporates references to political violence? Is there any way to combat it?

I think the way you combat it is to shut down Donald Trump because he has basically overtaken the Republican Party. The New York Times did an analysis of how many times he has cast aspersions on Nancy Pelosi in his six years, seven years. It was 800 times. And he has demeaned her and recently posted a picture in which he said, your enemy is not in Russia. As if to suggest that, you know, he is stirring up this militia in the United States. And he said on another station when asked about his, you know, the people are really angry, terrible things are going to happen. Well, terrible things have happened. And he’s in conjunction with, you know, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who actually said that Speaker Pelosi should be executed. I mean, this kind of hate talk from elected officials … Is that free speech? It is hate-mongering on levels that we just can’t tolerate moving forward.

You’ve been in Congress for a long time. How has the attitude of legislators on the other side of the aisle from you changed over the years?

It’s gotten progressively worse. And unfortunately, when Donald Trump got elected, he was able to give license to people saying outrageous things. And the growth of social media has allowed members of Congress to recognize that if you say something outrageous, you’re going to get more likes. It’s going to go viral. You’ll be able to raise more money. And so it’s kind of this addiction that encourages people to become more and more outrageous in their conduct.

There has been a move by some Republicans to dismiss the connection between violent rhetoric and attacks like this one, or even to turn the blame back on Democrats for this incident by treating it as a law-and-order issue or concocting wild theories. How can you and other Democrats respond effectively?

You bet I want law and order. And every Democrat wants law and order. This whole thought process in which they try to label the Democrats as being the ones that do not support law and order is made out of whole cloth. They’re the ones. And you can go to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee chair, who posts a picture of him shooting a gun, and the hashtag below is “hashtag fire Pelosi.” Now, he stands by that, saying that it was about the Second Amendment. He didn’t say that in the picture he posted. So the violence is being promoted by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It’s incumbent on us to point to that and to challenge it. I carried the resolution to censure Paul Gosar when he posted a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her in the crosshairs. I mean, we cannot tolerate that. And so, you know, it’s incumbent on people like Kevin McCarthy, it’s incumbent on Speaker Pelosi, if there were people within the Democratic caucus who were fomenting violence, to count them out, to call them out. You don’t hear that happening. Or from Kevin McCarthy. In fact, he didn’t even say a word about the attack on Paul Pelosi for over a day. Former President Trump never said a word.

Representative Speier, we had a listener write in to challenge a phrase that we’ve been using in our newscasts, that Mr. Pelosi is expected to make a full recovery. The listener questioned that, while that may be true physically, does a person ever make a full recovery from this kind of assault, in spirit? As a survivor of violent crime yourself, what is your perspective?

I think that’s accurate. I think … that term came from a press release that the speaker’s office put out. But physical recovery is very different from emotional recovery. And I’m sure that this will haunt not only Paul Pelosi but the speaker and her children and grandchildren. It’s a despicable act. We have to be willing to call out that kind of conduct as what it is. I mean, it was violence of the highest sort. It was an attempt at an assassination of the speaker of the House who wasn’t there. And so her husband became the target.

Do you have concerns that the growing threat of political violence like this could deter good people from running for office? 

Of course, absolutely. I mean, when members of Congress have to pay out of their campaign accounts for personal bodyguards, I mean, think about that. Why would people want to place their family and themselves at that kind of risk? I mean, it’s really beyond the pale. And I don’t know how we’re going to excise it from our political commentary, but we’ve got to do something. There has to be an effort to tamp this down in a way that is meaningful. But again, social media drives hostile language, encourages hostile language. Hostile language encourages campaign fundraising. And you can see how this becomes a truly vicious cycle.

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