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This is good so I’m just going to post link to the Pelosi video. There’s no hard evidence he was a right wing intruder. I notice two things he had a drink in his hand and was partially undressed. Now if someone broke into my house late I’d probably be in my boxers. But I wouldn’t be wearing a button down shirt too; I’d be topless or in a t-shirt
I think the video will be interpreted both sides. It doesn’t prove he was paying a crazy gay prostitute to blow him but bodycam would lean in that direction instead of a red tribe terrorist.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-paul-pelosi-hammer-attack-bodycam-video-released.
I guess bigger culture war issue is if he was just trying to get his dick sucked and the media said that was false and it was a right wing terrorist then basically confirms a lot of peoples view that they are lying to us. (Nothing wrong with trying to get your dick sucked).
Edit: there’s video of him breaking in which adds more to the intruder narrative I didn’t see previously still weird video of cops entering. Without breaking in video it looked more like a domestic.
The reactions to this video are strange to me.
The attacker is smiling because he is a drug addict having a manic episode.
Paul is smiling because he is trying to mirror the attackers demeanor as an attempt to de-escalate the situation. Paul is a hyper-social business person and married to one of the most powerful political operatives in the world.
Paul isn't wearing a button down dress shirt, he's wearing pajamas.
He's wearing boxer shorts because he was asleep and that's probably what he sleeps in.
He's probably holding a beer or other drink in his hand because he's been trying to calm the attacker down and buy time. If a manic schizophrenic broke into my house and I was trying to buy time, asking them if it was okay if I got a drink while we waited for Nancy to get home (waiting for the cops to arrive) seems completely reasonable. Or asking him if he wanted something.
This video seems completely boring to me. To be clear, the narrative surrounding it is also completely ridiculous.
I agree, I think a lot of people are pretty desperate to reframe this to somehow make Paul look bad because they don’t like him. He is clearly the victim here and Musk and everyone else who was pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories about this attack should simply move on to other topics.
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I think part of the problem is none of us can get into the headspace of the DePape, or at least that's what confuses me about it. It's hard for me to accept someone is just that stupid, like a genuine npc. This guy was agentic enough to find out where pelosi lives, go and break into the place but is somehow struggling with an 80 year old man over a hammer? It may be a typical mind fallacy, where I model conspiracy theory whackos as at least capable of some type of minimal tactical thinking. You are finally doing your big show and yes it's going wrong because Nancy isn't home but then the police show up and you just like walk the guy who weighs half or less as much as you to the door and answer it? Yes, actually a human being like that is hard to fit into my understanding of what humans are and so I reach for alternative explanations.
The reason why a lot of people are in jail, is because most people are dumb, not people who put a lot of thought into what they're doing. The very fact so many people online think of ways why criminals could get away with thnigs is...why they're not criminals.
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Most criminals are stupid; most crimes are simple.
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It's called a severe mental illness, probably exaggerated by drug use.
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Yeah. Exactly. The story doesn’t make sense because the actor shows seemingly competence and extreme incompetence at the same time. Plus, you add in all of the “keep the videos secret” push by DOJ and so the brain starts trying to make the story rational in light of what looks a bit like a cover up.
But it seems crystal clear now that it was just a really crazy guy who is a mix of competent and extremely incompetent.
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If "The SFPD is so totally owned by the Pelosi's that they either fabricated DePape's confession or coerced him into a false confession" seems more plausible to you then "an 82 year old had a shitty security system, wore a button up shirt to bed, and had a funny expression on his face in a highly stressful situation" then you have some wild priors.
How does a random weirdo get into the house of the third most powerful person in the US?
In addition to their power, the Pelosis have over $100 million! Doesn't that buy you enough home security to keep out random weirdos in San Francisco, a city notoriously full of random weirdos who break into houses and cars?
Or the numerous times this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_(intruder) broke into buckingham palace. Most people don’t maximize physical security because our social contract doesn’t require it.
Fagan did that shit in the eighties. The social contract has changed drastically since then. Trying to find info about break ins at Buckingham Palace just get flooded with Fagan stories, but I remember some other guy was inspired by Fagan to break in around a decade ago and got caught right after jumping the fence. Also most people aren't hundred millionaires who run the country.
Yeah but if you read the wiki article it's not like there weren't security systems, the police just ignored the alarms since they assumed they were faulty. All it takes it one or two fuck ups for something like the Pelosi break in to happen, which is hardly implausible.
Also, MPs in Britain still don't really have extraordinary levels of security. David Ames' murderer was seemingly able to just walk up him in a constituency surgery and stab him. Iirc in the mid-2000s there was an MP who was attacked by someone in the lobby of the House of Commons, which you wouldn't think likely.
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Yes, but legislators aren't accustomed to thinking of themselves as suffering from extremely heightened exposure to random crazies the way executives are, so their security is lighter.
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I guess the same way a random weirdo gets into the house of the number one most powerful person in the US.
Sure, that's a good point. I suppose staggering incompetence and complacency is a decent answer.
Mid ranking judges in my much more peaceful country get offered extra home security. I would've thought very high-ranking officials in a violent country get proportionately more protection, especially given the hysteria about terrorism for the last 15 years.
As mentioned below, Nancy Pelosi has more protection, but she wasn't there, and since historically, with very few exceptions, violence against politicians in America is 'crazed weirdo with barely coherent thoughts who does it in public', nobody thinks somebody is going to try to break-in to a prominent politician's home and commit violence.
Hell, even at the height of political violence in the 70's, while Italian Prime Ministers were getting kidnapped, our violence left-wingers...bombed some post offices and office buildings, but made sure the bombs went off when nobody would be there.
I still can't believe a very rich and powerful family in the richest country in the world don't have shatter-proof windows. It's one thing if you have some men blasting down the bulletproof windows with sustained machine-gun fire, or if they use some kind of advanced tactic. Even an intermediate tactic or a basic tactic is something. I've seen tiktoks from South Africans showing more serious and elaborate security systems than whatever was going on here.
Nobody in the whole bloated US security/intelligence sector thought 'Al Qaeda has a bunch of skilled and capable operators working hard on doing us harm, so we should ensure our highest ranking politicans have decent protection at home, that their close relatives aren't kidnapped or anything'? Nobody thought that maybe the US Capitol should have doors that can lock and block unarmed masses of angry people, let alone well-armed terrorists prepared to die for their beliefs? What were they spending all that anti-terror money on? Doesn't this seem absurd?
You do believe what you say you don’t believe because, as you pointed out yourself, it is true. Or are you saying there’s a conspiracy to pretend pelosi has no shatter proof windows, but he does?
The US is violent in parts and very safe in parts and doesn’t have that much in political violence.
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But the US isn't South Africa. Hell, it isn't even Europe, where there are soldiers with assault rifles on what seems like every street and subway station in Western Europe and 3x the number of police per capita (humorously, this is what the average European internet commentator appears to think the US is like). Though considering the amount of political violence that occurs in Europe, and how packed together everyone is in the nations there, the fact that the social systems are basically expecting a revolution every 50 years or so (France is on its Fifth Republic in 200 years- in fact, apart from the UK, most European polities are less than 30 years old- and this isn't even ahistorical for them) they absolutely have a reason for the increased security.
To my knowledge, "they don't actually have any skilled and capable operators" was their assessment, and that assessment was ultimately correct (alternately, their SIGINT is so good they managed to stop everything; I'm half willing to believe this but ultimately have no real basis for that).
Why would it need that? You can normally just waltz right in to the Capitol; it's not like those other countries where "government is this closed-off, special thing". Unlike 24 Sussex Drive or Buckingham Palace, you can just go in to the White House to the point that they have organized tours most every day. You'd kind of expect that from a country with such anime-esque slogans and beliefs about government... especially since most people still believe in it 250 years after the fact.
(Also, the symmetry in the US massively favors the attacker- the tools for that are not only readily available to basically anyone, but ownership of them for such a purpose is celebrated by half the nation and its founding document. It's probably not worth trying to stop even with added security across all politicians and their families, with the exception of the President and his Vice.)
Well, the US is an absurd country where most citizens are defended from others simply by being really spread out, defended from its enemies by two oceans, and rich enough that the people who are screwed up enough to attack politicians are relatively inept.
I should defend Britain here by saying that you can in fact just go and watch the proceedings of the House of Commons or Lords whenever you like. Unless you want to watch PMQs or a very important debate you don't have to book, you just walk in and queue. In quieter times you can often go straight in iirc, even though the gallery is quite small.
Also, you can actually just walk into the lobby of Parliament and ask to see your MP, and I am told that some MPs do sometimes (though probably relatively rarely) just go and see random constituents who turn up there and ask for them.
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He smashes the window of a door with a hammer, unlocks the door, and walks inside. There is a video of this happening if you want I can find it.
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My parents got a security sytem after a single break in 2 decades ago. Guess how often it is now actually on? They remember to set it about a third of the time leaving. And my dad dosen't like it on when he is in the house because it goes off when he opens the windows. In theory he turns it on when they go to bed but thats a coin flip at best.
Complacency is common even among the well off, especially if you haven't had any incidents in a long time.
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What are your priors on people cracking a Heinekin during a home invasion?
I mean, Paul Pelosi is pretty clearly an alcoholic, and DePape is pretty clearly a nut who isn’t interested in him in any particular way.
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If I were an unarmed elderly man alone with a crazy guy with a hammer my strategy would be to de-escalate the situation as much as possible. Act calm, and normal, keep the crazy guy (who said his plan was not to assassinate Pelosi but to interrogate her) talking until the police show up. Maybe offer him a drink, or have a drink myself to give the impression that the situation is normal.
Is that the modal outcome when a potential assailant breaks into an elderly person's home? Probably not, but it seems more likely than a major police department being so bought off it would coerce a lengthy false confession and continued silence from DePape in an extremely high-profile case. "Elderly guy has a drink in his hand during home invasion" also seems much more plausible to me than "extremely rich man hires a chubby neckbeard guy who posts right-wing manifestos as a gay prostitute in the #1 city for gay prostitutes, then pays him so little the guy comes back and murders him with a hammer"? When I saw these memes I assumed the guy was hot or something but good lord.
Exactly. Were a crazy guy to break into my house, I would absolutely offer a drink to humor him.
Maybe offer him a drink -- just grabbing one for yourself doesn't seem likely to curry any favour.
Doesn’t one usually make a drink for oneself as well as the other person?
Pelosi was the only one in the video with a drink?
At the moment the door was opened, yes. That doesn't mean he didn't offer the other guy one, nor that the other guy didn't have one two seconds earlier.
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That's how you offer a drink without being patronising.
I usually say "how about a beer?" -- I hope I haven't been patronizing all this time?
I meant in the context of trying to appease someone. You can't have them thinking you're trying to handle them.
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Is this a joke? I can't be sure.
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Yeah if some guy breaks into my house with a hammer wanting the truth about the one world government my wife runs I'd call the cops, crack a beer, and make up some wild stories for him.
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I do have the priors to not trust the left. Won’t lie about that. And a lot of us do.
But you don't have to trust "the left" you have to trust that the SFPD didn't coerce an elaborate confession and continued silence from this guy.
Arent they ran by leftist? Do I have to trust the fbi? That they would never lie to us (or plan a kidnapping of a governor or invent a Russian hoax). And it’s not like right leaning cops have never lied. So yes until proven I’m not going to just trust the SFPD.
So yes I’ve had officials lie to me before so not exactly going to accept the narrative.
There's a huge gap between "the politically appointed leadership of the SFPD is probably left-leaning" and "rank and file members of the SFPD are so thoroughly corrupt that everyone involved in this case is willing to fabricate/coerce a confession". And there's a huge difference between, lying about the details of an altercation in order to paint the department in a favorable light and fabricating/coercing the confession of a still living witness who could at any time just come out and say "no I was actually a gay prostitute".
You don't have to knee-jerk trust the narrative, but if you also just reflexively assume the opposite of the narrative you're gonna end up making some wildly implausible claims.
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I don't really see how the video supports the gay prostitute hypothesis. If DePape was a gay prostitute Paul hired, why did DePape have to break into the house to get in? Why did Paul call 911? Why did DePape try to murder Paul with a hammer when the police showed up?
We also have DePape's own testimony about what he was doing there. If DePape was a prositute hired by Pelosi, why tell the police he was there to interrogate Nancy Pelosi and break her kneecaps?
However strange Paul's behavior is when answering the door I feel like the gay prostitute hypothesis is many times more absurd.
So, this is the kind of careful wording that puts my hackles up. He wanted her to tell the truth about what? She was the "leader of the pack", we get that as a purported direct quote, but "of lies told by the Democratic Party" is not a direct quote. Later direct quotes have him wanting her broken kneecaps to be a symbol to "other members of Congress". Did the police just not bother to ask what sort of "truth" he was looking for? It seems kind of pertinent to the attempts at partisan spins.
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Thanks for more video. Google wasn’t given me this one. The other video by itself looked like gay prostitute.
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The only explanation I can make of this is that Paul Pelosi has dementia, or was so drunk that he couldn't make out what was happening. His 911 call sounds a lot like someone who has dementia. The male prostitute theory makes absolutely no sense--why would a prostitute break in?
He seemed normal to me.
The context of the call is baffling. Why would this guy let him call? Clearly Pelosi was trying to get the police to come without saying "HELP" while the responder seemingly had no clue what was going on (for most?) of it.
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The "male prostitute" hypothesis is simply ludicrous, as I've already noted the previous time, but if you want even more evidence against it, then well, they released surveillance video where the DePape uses the hammer to break into the back door of Pelosi's house. This is not how you typically invite male prostitutes into your house, I believe. At this point, the only way I can steelman this stupid theory is that Pelosi asked him to "smash up his rear entrance" and DePape took it literally.
Several possibilities, mostly revolving around prior encounter / relationship. DePape feels scorned, or wants money, or wants leverage for anarchist / crazy / Nancy reasons. His arrival is neither invited nor welcomed in this instance, yet DePape is determined to proceed.
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That's my personal headcanon from here on out.
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The entire thing is so confusing. The only certain thing is that the version of the story in the media has to be false.
Why is Paul in boxers ?
Why are they both so happy ?
Why is it so quiet even before the police get there ?
Why does Paul open the door when both his hands are occupied ?
Why does he have a drink in his hands ?
What were they doing for 30 minutes until the police arrived ?
How did an obese man break into fucking Nancy Pelosi's house without any alarms sounding ?
Why does he say "It's good" when he is clearly threatened ?
Who wears a shirt inside their house ?
No security systems at all ?
How did a guy hammering at a door not wake anyone up ?
The attacker:
Illegal immigrant from Canada
Had a Q-esque deranged manifesto that ended with American political theater.
But was also a hipster nudist
All that being said, it looks like he is clearly attacked and got hurt in a manner that would be life-threatening to any 80 yr old. Why would an almost-retired 200 millionaire pull a stunt like this ? The alternate conspiracies also do not make any sense. I don't buy that this has anything to do with Trump or MAGA, but he does seem to be taken in with every major conspiracy theory under the sun.
Maybe reality IS stranger than fiction, and outside the media claims about the guys affiliation, the rest of the story is true. As strange as it is, that does seem like the story most likely to be true.
Nancy Pelosi not being at home seems to have thrown DePape off, once unbalanced maybe Paul Pelosi was trying a friendly, non-threatening angle with DePape? "Yes, your desire to break my wife's kneecaps sounds reasonable, what a nice young man you are. Here, can I pour you a drink? Let me regale you with a story from when I was a young 40-something like yourself. You don't need to hurt me, I'm helping you out." Just running the time until security/police get there.
Yeah, that is the tentative conclusion I've reached as well.
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Yes that seems like the optimal strategy available to an unarmed elderly man confronted with a young male intruder armed with a hammer. What was Paul supposed to do, freak out scream for help and try to fight the guy? He would have been bludgeoned thirty minutes sooner than he did!
These are the easiest to explain possible "strange details" a conspiracy theory has ever rested on. Honestly I think a bunch of right-wing influencers just did it as a dumb joke "huh huh Nancy Pelosi's so ugly her husband probably hires gay prostitutes lol" and the very online right is so reflexively anti-media that they bought into it.
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Most of these questions can be answered with "people do weird things more often than you think". None of them are evidence worth hanging any sort of theory on.
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This is a bizarre video is all I can really say. The cops come in and they're both like smiling? I understand deer in the headlights but all I can think of to explain it is some wacky drug use. This just bring ups more questions not less. I do agree that this really doesn't look consistent with a break in attack but it doesn't really look consistent with any narrative, besides like they're both tripping balls on something.
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Yeah, but you're not a 9-figure net worth octogenarian that drinks aggressively. I would be very unsurprised to find out that Paul Pelosi regularly passes out wild Donald Ducking a button-down.
Come on man. The one thing I agree with Bill Gates is the cheeseburger taste the same(he has a famous quote on that). Rich people don’t do things in their everyday life that much different than the poors.
Shrug. I know people that wear button-downs daily and that don't seem to be in as much of a rush to shed them as I am when I'm stuck wearing one. That seems more pronounced among old people.
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They released footage of the break-in, too. I agree that Pelosi's behavior in the body cam footage is baffling, but I also can't reconcile it with footage that clearly shows the guy was smashing Pelosi's window with a hammer to get in.
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I have no idea what the heck was going on there. All I'm willing to believe is that California is in such a state it's entirely possible for the home of someone fairly important in the Democratic Party to be broken into by random weirdo. There's plenty of weirdoes in California, God knows; I'm just surprised the Pelosis didn't have much tighter security. Does anyone know if where they live is considered a "good neighbourhood" so they didn't feel they needed to do more than a basic burglar alarm? It might just be an artefact of "We've lived here for thirty years and it was perfectly fine when we moved in and we haven't taken account of how things have changed with the passage of time".
They live in Pac Heights, which is the nicest part of SF and has been since the quake. Mostly owner-occupied large single family homes that tend to go for eight figures (along with some condos that span from mid sevens to eights). I'm in the area semi-regularly, and there's a fair amount of foot traffic, but mostly well-to-do folks going on their morning jog etc. Not a homeless person in sight. Uphill from all the sketchier areas, and (un)surprisingly good police presence for the low level of crime there. Pretty much every home there will have a burglar alarm system with very fast police response times.
Neighbors include Jony Ives, Danielle Steele, the Gettys, Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, probably some other names I'm forgetting. I think Peter Thiel used to have a spot there?
Someone I dated for a bit did get mugged and beaten up while going on a run a few blocks south from it, but that is (relatively) rare for the area and happened at dusk.
ETA: a house maybe a block from her: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/2660-Scott-St-94123/home/1667074
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The number of neighborhoods in the US, let alone SF, where that is the case is essentially zero. In contrast, the number of neighborhoods where the opposite is the case is enormous.
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