As of this writing, late on Friday afternoon, there’s still nothing on DR about Wednesday’s foiled assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. (But, as you can imagine, plenty of stuff on the star chamber show trial underway in Congress.)
Nothing on TV2 News, either.
Can’t find anything related to the story when using “Kavanaugh” and even “højesteret” (supreme court) in the search functions of the Politiken and Jyllands-Posten websites.
Berlingske and BT still haven’t added anything to the Ritzau/AFP news service piece they ran on Wednesday, entitled “armed man arrested near supreme court justice’s home in USA” (which I’m pretty sure I also saw as a blurb in DR’s news feed at the time, although I can no longer find it).
Armed, you say?
That’s one way of putting it. Here’s how Axios characterizes it:
After searching the backpack, law enforcement officials found a black tactical vest and tactical knife, a pistol with two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crow bar, pistol light, duct tape, hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles.
The Ritzau/AFP piece informs us only that “the man was carrying weapons and equipment to commit a break-in, writes the Washington Post.”
The Post’s paywall prevents me from finding out if that’s how they describe the man’s accoutrements. If it is, that’s disgraceful of the Post (although disgrace appears to be their thing lately); if not, it’s disgraceful of Ritzau and AFP for using that characterization.
Look at that inventory from Axios again. Those aren’t breaking-and-entering tools: they’re abduct-and-torture-and-kill tools.
I mean: who uses zip ties and duct tape to break into a building?
This information of what the man had with him was available from the moment the story broke. It was widely reported across American media—even some of the leftist establishment media (where the story was still given only relatively subdued coverage given that this was an attempt to assassinate a Supreme Court justice).
It’s also worth noting that weeks ago, when the draft Supreme Court decision first leaked (which was bad) and activists published the home addresses of the justices (which was worse) and protestors began gathering before the home of Brett Kavanaugh (which was and remains illegal), conservatives’ concerns about the safety of the justices were waved aside by Joe Biden himself. He muttered some mumbles about the right to protest peacefully, etc, etc, but never addressed the doxxing of the justices or the fact that the mobs gathered around the justices’ homes were actually breaking the law.
There’s a Chuck Schumer quote from a few years ago making the rounds on conservative news and opinion sites. Here’s what the Senate Majority Leader had to say back in March 2020, when the Supreme Court was hearing another abortion-related case:
I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh… You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!
That’s of a piece with all the divisive and inciteful rhetoric we’ve been hearing from the left since (at least) 2016.
For what it’s worth, Schumer has in fact responded to the resurfacing of this quote. According to Newsweek (in an article that includes video of the statement cited above but seems to serve no purpose beyond helping Schumer try to squirm out of this mess):
Schumer had previously retracted his comments, saying from the Senate floor that he “should not have used the words [he] used” the day before.
“They didn’t come out the way I intended to,” the senator said in 2020. “My point was that there would be political consequences—political consequences—for President Trump and Senate Republicans if the Supreme Court, with the newly confirmed justices, stripped away a woman’s right to choose.”
“Of course, I didn’t intend to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court, and it is a gross distortion to imply otherwise,” he added.
In a statement sent to Newsweek on Wednesday, Schumer’s team reiterated that the senator has “been clear that he supports peaceful protests and is thankful law enforcement arrested this person today.”
Fascinating.
He calls out two justices by name and tells them they won’t know what hit them.
And he tells us that what he really meant was that there would be political consequences for President Trump and Senate Republicans.
You buying that?
Supreme Court justices serve for life: there are no political consequences for them. Ever. That’s why they get lifetime appointments: it keeps them out of the hurly burly of politics. It elevates them so they can make the hard and unpopular decisions their job requires them to make. (Almost every Supreme Court decision is unpopular with some chunk of the population.)
Saying “you will pay the price” and “you won’t know what hit you” is therefore hard to reconcile with “there will be political consequences for people who are not you.” And when I say hard, I mean impossible.
He was stirring the pot and he knew it.
I don’t hold Chuck Schumer responsible for Nicholas Roske’s attempt to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh. The only one responsible for that is Nicholas Roske.
But it’s an extraordinary study in contrasts to watch Donald Trump, who told his supporters to go home prior to what became the January 6th riot, is being excoriated by a Congressional kangaroo court on live television for “incitement,” while rhetoric like Schumer’s (which was and is hardly unique), is brushed aside as an irrelevance.
He said he didn’t mean it! It just came out wrong!
What are the rules of this game we’re playing?
We’re constantly being told by the president, by his spokespeople, by leaders of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, and by every shrieking harpy and harridan of the establishment media, that America’s greatest threat right now—the greatest threat to democracy in America—is coming from the right. It’s existential!
Here’s Ole Puddinhead sounding off just three weeks ago:
Biden on Tuesday called out the media, political figures and the internet for radicalizing “angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals” into believing “replacement theory,” a racist concept that casts minorities as an existential threat to white people. Prominent Republican and conservative media figures have promoted the far-right ideology, including popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit,” Biden said.
That’s Ole Puddinhead using the bully pulpit to pin the blame for the Buffalo grocery store massacre on the political right.
It’s pure fantasy. Tucker Carlson hasn’t promoted “replacement theory.” Nor has any other prominent conservative media figure. You say they have? Show me.
You know who’s radicalizing people? Joe Biden, who’s constantly depicting his political opponents as white supremacists seeking to overthrow the republic with treachery and violence.
A good example is Ole Puddinhead’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night television program earlier this week. Let’s get the story from the leftist rag Newsweek so we also get a sense of how the GLOB media are covering this nasty old man’s divisive schtick:
Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel Live! in his first in-person late-night talk show appearance since he took office, Biden discussed gun control in the U.S. and the issues with trying to get both sides to agree on reform.
Kimmel asked Biden why he doesn’t just issue executive orders to combat gun violence, noting that former President Donald Trump “passed those out like Halloween candy.”
Biden said that he has issued a number of executive orders “within the power of presidency” but that he doesn’t want to “emulate Trump’s abuse of the Constitution” and constitutional authority.
“We often get asked, ‘look, the Republicans don’t play it square, why do you play square?'” Biden said. “Well, guess what? If we do the same thing they do, our democracy would literally be in jeopardy.”
Kimmel then made the analogy that the situation is like when “you’re playing Monopoly with somebody” who won’t follow any of the rules.
“How do you ever make any progress if they’re not following the rules?” Kimmel asked.
“We gotta send them to jail,” Biden replied, in reference to the square in the board game.
See how he does it? And how they cover for him—both Kimmel and Newsweek?
His political opponents aren’t just ideological adversaries: they’re enemies of democracy, abusers of the Constitution, cheaters—and they belong in jail.
And how do you like that editorial aside by Newsweek—the on-the-fly clarification that the president’s reference to jailing his political opponents was just a Monopoly reference?
I mean, obviously it’s a Monopoly reference, because it’s a Monopoly analogy. We know this first of all because Newsweek already told us so, and secondly because Jimmy Kimmel—sorry, Jimmy Kimmel Live!— was obviously not talking about Republicans’ propensity for cheating at board games.
In the context of the metaphor Kimmel is asking: how do you cooperate with those awful Republicans? And Biden’s answer is: you get them out of the way.
But if Republicans are actually “cheating,” if they’re actually breaking the law, then call them out on it. Have them charged, indicted, and prosecuted.
If they’re not—and they aren’t, or you can bet your sweet patootie that charges would have been filed—then you’re peddling inflammatory accusations. You’re implying that your political opponents are illegitimate. That the loyal opposition is in fact a hostile and implacable enemy.
Where are they cheating, Joe? When your party controls the White House, the Senate, and the House, and your hand-picked crew is running our federal law enforcement and intelligence communities, are we really supposed to believe that your agenda of unity and sunshine is being held up because Republicans are cheating?
Wasn’t it a couple of Democrats who blocked your “Build Back Better” boondoggle? (Narrator: “Why, yes. Yes, it was.”)
Isn’t it the Constitutionally appointed Supreme Court that appears prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade, assuming they survive long enough to release their decision? (Narrator: “Why, yes. Yes it is.”)
Time after time after time, the actual political violence we’re seeing in America—the violence committed by people who plainly acknowledge their political motivations—is coming from the left. Assassination attempts like those against the Republican baseball team, the driving of a car into a parade of dancing grandmas, the recent rash of pro-life birth center firebombings, the months of BLM riots, the roving antifa thugs: that’s all coming from the left.
And the rhetoric we keep hearing from the political leadership of the left, from the president on down, continues to be divisive, continues to incite, to provoke. It asserts the existence of an eliminationist impulse on the right—but who’s comparing whom to the KKK? Who spent whole months barking at the public that voting reform laws in Georgia were worse than Jim Crow? Which party’s leaders and cheerleaders insist that democracy will die and darkness will descend over the land if the opposition gets their way?
You can’t maintain this drumbeat of demonization without expecting at least sporadic incidents of… ugliness.
The Kimmel episode, by the way, came after the Kavanaugh assassination attempt. Did Ole Puddinhead dial his rhetoric down? The portion already cited says no: here’s a portion that makes it even plainer:
“I don’t think the country will stand for it,” Biden said of a possible Roe defeat in the Supreme Court on Kimmel. “If in fact the decision comes down the way it does, and these states impose the limitations they’re talking about, it’s going to cause a mini-revolution and they’re going to vote these folks out of office.”
A mini-revolution? Yeah, yeah, he talks about voting, but why speak of any kind of revolution within hours of a would-be assassin having been captured with a handy-dandy “abduction and torture kit” in Brett Kavanaugh’s neighborhood?
Remember when Sarah Palin was blamed for a shooting because her campaign had used clip-art of a target over congressional districts being targeted for recapture by Republicans? Remember when people were suggesting that, in response, all military metaphors should be banned from political discourse because of their intrinsic encouragement of actual violence?
Those same blubbering dementoids have thus far responded to this week’s attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh with a collective shrug.
This presents an excellent opportunity for Ole Puddinhead to stand up in the bully pulpit and rage about how un-American Nicholas Roske’s intentions were. How un-democratic. How barbaric. How disgraceful. How outrageous. To tell the nation and the world that he won’t stand for it. To call it domestic terrorism. To bark at us the way he did when Georgia decided to tighten up their voting laws to level of those in his home state of Maryland.
But he won’t.
That kind of rhetoric is reserved for his real enemy: Republicans.
So I expect the Danish media are already done with the story—to the extent any of them are even aware of it.