The top two leaders in Congress both had their homes vandalised – apparently in response to the Covid relief bill that recently passed through Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s House and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s Senate.
Spraypainted messages on the garage door of Ms Pelosi’s San Francisco home read “$2K,” “Cancel rent!” and “We want everything!” A severed pigs head and a trail of red paint were left on her driveway, KPIX in San Francisco reported. A couple of circled A’s could also be seen, a mark most often meant to symbolize anarchism. San Francisco police said that they first received a call about the incident around 2 AM in the morning on New Years Day. Ms Pelosi has so far not commented.
Democrats started to push for $2,000 direct payments after President Trump expressed disappointment that the most recent Covid relief bill only included $600 direct payments to struggling Americans. After the House passed the measure with the help of 44 Republicans, Mr McConnell blocked the bill in the Senate, saying that it would send “thousands of dollars to people who don’t need the help”, POLITICO wrote.
One of Ms Pelosi’s neighbours, Audrey Carlson, told KPIX that she did n’ot think the vandalism was a “useful way to go about it and it’s a terrible start to this new year when we are hoping for less anger and hatred than we’ve had to deal with for the last year”.
“Where’s my money,” was spray painted on the front door of Mitch McConnell’s Louisville house in Kentucky. Other more profane messages were painted along the front porch, WDRB writes.
Mr McConnell issued a statement saying that while he has defended the First Amendment throughout his career, this was “different”.
“Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society. My wife and I have never been intimidated by this toxic playbook. We just hope our neighbors in Louisville aren’t too inconvenienced by this radical tantrum,” WYMT reported him as saying.
Demonstrators also gathered outside Mr McConnell’s home in Kentucky multiple times in September, protesting his decision to fill the Supreme Court of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, among other issues, according to several reports by the Louisville Courier Journal.