New York Magazine's Chait Circles the Wagons for Schumer After Kavanaugh Assassination Attempt

Becca Lower reporting for RedState 

It sure must be nice to be a Democrat. Of course, I say that in what might be considered a joking or sarcastic way. You probably get that, though.

I’m also going to reckon most readers heard about Wednesday’s breaking story on the California man who attempted to assassinate a conservative member of the United States Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, at his Maryland home.

We also wrote later that day on the big-time Democrat leaders and pundits who’ve made many inconvenient, previous statements, which can be read as urging violence against Republicans and conservatives — especially highly visible ones like, you know, sitting presidents and SCOTUS justices.

One Republican lawmaker, Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz spoke out loudly against the Democrats’ hypocrisy on this, especially statements like this one from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY):

On Friday’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” Maher had some tough words about Schumer’s possible culpability, as well, though the host makes a quick U-turn in tone — because, he says, the politician “walk[ed] it back” later:

“Okay, and they stopped him, okay, but he was, he’s from California, he could have been inspired by.. Chuck Schumer said some very inflammatory words,” he said, referring to the Democrat senator’s 2020 call for retaliation against conservative judges, singling out Kavanaugh by name, “the kind of thing that people on the right say and there’s a horrible shooting and they blame it.. it is rather comparable.”

“And Chuck Schumer did walk it back,” he said, in defense of the Senate Majority Leader. “Nobody on the right ever does that… he did. I saw this. He did. He said ‘we’re from Brooklyn, we speak too strongly.’

Maybe it was a coincidence, but this seems to be the way the left is trying to circle this particular wagon.

Jonathan Chait in his latest column at New York Magazine, insists that Chuck Schumer did nothing wrong, and of course, Republicans pounced — in this case, smeared him — for no good reason. Check out the headline and sub-hed here:

“Republicans Smearing Chuck Schumer With Kavanaugh Assassination Attempt”

The context of the Democrat’s “threatening” speech is clearly nonviolent.

Chait begins by doubling down on blaming Republicans, adding that they “seized” on the breaking news to hurt the innocent, blameless NY lawmaker. You gotta hate when that happens.

Anyway, he then gives a longer quote from the speech, which Schumer gave at a pro-abortion rally in 2020, and inserts several GOP pundits and pols’ citations of a sliver of it (including Cruz’s). That’s fair.

The portion of the speech in which Schumer was allegedly seeding a murder plot is this:

From Louisiana to Missouri to Texas, Republican legislatures are waging a war on women, all women, and they’re taking away fundamental rights. 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.

But here’s where Chait’s argument falters, by pointing to the “relevant context” of Schumer’s remarks:

More relevant context can be found in the speech itself. The very next lines in the speech, after “decisions,” are as follows:

The bottom line is very simple. We will stand with the American people. We will stand with American women. We will tell President Trump and Senate Republicans, who have stacked the Court with right-wing ideologues, that you’re going to be gone in November, and you will never be able to do what you’re trying to do now ever, ever again. You hear that over there on the far right? You’re gone in November.

That’s all well and good to talk about context, in a scholarly, sober discussion of policy differences. It’s an easy thing to say Republicans should show their work or whatever. But leftists cannot get away with not owning the emotional nature of the rhetoric people like Schumer and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot throw out to the Democrat base.

Do I know whether the man who wanted to kill Kavanaugh ever saw the speech or was aware of it? No, I don’t.

But when someone who suffers from obvious mental issues, like the would-be assassin just a few streets from Justice Kavanaugh’s front door, sees a video on social media on “reaping the whirlwind” and the names of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch escaping a senior Democrat leader’s lips, they’re not looking for context or the bigger picture. The left can write a hundred tretises on the proper lens we are supposed to read Democrats’ comments through — but it’s obvious they will never give a Republican the same courtesy on what was meant. That’s something they can’t excuse or explain away.