Donald Trump joked about the brutal 2022 attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police on Friday.
“Nancy Pelosi has a big wall wrapped around her house. Of course, it didn’t help too much with the problems she had, did it?” the former president said, referring to a break-in at Pelosi’s home in which a Canadian conspiracy theorist David DePape struck Paul Pelosi with a hammer in an attempted kidnapping of the former speaker of the House.
The crass jab earned some awkward chuckles from police officers in attendance. It came as Trump was criticizing Democratic politicians for having security at their homes.
“They live in safety, in many cases behind walls, you know that?” Trump said, after accusing Democratic politicians of “forc[ing] anarchy on the American people.”
Nancy Pelosi condemned political violence after Trump was shot by would-be assassin Thomas Crooks in July. She noted in a statement that she knew “firsthand” the harms that come from politically motivated acts of terror.
Prosecutors revealed Trump-inspired anti-government writings on his DePape’s blog while building their case against him following the attack. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in May.
In the speech, Trump also slammed an alleged uptick in crime in his hometown of New York City, despite his announcement that he’d sent his son Barron Trump to New York University on Wednesday.
“The new thing in New York, you go to a pharmacy to buy aspirin, to buy a toothbrush, and it takes you 45 minutes to get a clerk to open up the glass, because people are walking in and just taking as much as they want,” Trump said, adding that city residents couldn’t leave their apartment without “getting mugged.”