re: Piers Morgan is about to out the officer that killed Ashlii Babbit

quote:

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You don’t actually believe they were going to execute Pence do you?

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If they weren't going to, don't say you are.

Would the Capitol mob have killed Mike Pence?
BONNIE KRISTIAN
FEBRUARY 11, 2021

Grinning between a thick, grey turtleneck and a red MAGA beanie, a woman named Dawn Bancroft described her experience storming the U.S. Capitol in January. With her friend happily looking on, she spoke in a selfie-style video that would later appear in an affidavit from federal prosecutors bringing criminal charges against her. "We got inside. We did our part," Bancroft crowed. "We were looking for [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)] to shoot her in the friggin' brain, but we didn't find her."

But what if Bancroft had found her? How real was the risk of violence to disfavored officials during the sedition at the Capitol? One of the impeachment managers in the Senate trial of former President Donald Trump for inciting the riot, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Co.), on Wednesday argued the mob "would have killed [then-Vice President] Mike Pence if given the chance." Is he right? Was Pence — or Pelosi, or others like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — in true danger? Many, like my colleague Matthew Walther, believe the answer is no. This was my initial take, too. I know people who would have happily attended the rally that became this riot, and when I imagine how they would have behaved inside the Capitol, I can't envision them hurting anyone. But I've come to believe there's a mistake in that thinking. The correct measure of the danger here is not what the average individual rioter would do. It's the behavior of the mob, and mobs of nice, normal, nonviolent people can and do kill.

Suppose Bancroft had come upon Pelosi without reinforcement from the angry crowd. I believe she would have confronted her: cursed, yelled, maybe even tried to steal Pelosi's phone or papers (many of the rioters left with congressional property and documents in hand). But I don't think Bancroft would have "shot her in the friggin' brain" in that one-on-one setting. Likewise, had one, isolated member of the "hang Mike Pence!" crowd encountered him alone, I expect the former veep would have emerged physically unharmed. (Granted, there were some in the crowd who seemed more capable of individual violence — think of the zip ties and tactical gear — but they were relatively few.)

But suppose Pelosi (or any similar target of the mob's ire) had stumbled, alone and unprotected, into a crowd of 100 or 1,000. Suppose they take notice. Suppose Pelosi tries to argue with them. Suppose she utters some phrase or makes some gesture they find particularly intolerable. Suppose she starts to text for help. Suppose one rioter smacks her phone from her hand. Suppose she tries to pick it up, and another rioter slaps her hand away. Suppose the whole seething group suddenly realizes no one is there to intervene. No one can stop them — certainly not Pelosi herself, aged 80 and dressed in heels and a narrow dress in which she couldn't run. There was no immediate consequence for the slap. There would be no consequence for another slap. And another. And is it really so difficult to imagine Pelosi ending up dead?

It wouldn't have happened with a noose or a single bullet to the head — nothing so orderly and neatly attributable to one or two people. It would have happened with the mob's quarry cowering on the floor being kicked to death, each rioter contributing only one or two strikes, doing just a small part, a part they could rationalize, a part they could tell themselves wasn't the proximate cause of death.