Ashli Babbitt was pure 100% MAGA.
TMZ:
“Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot in the Capitol as she and other Trump supporters stormed into the building, was pumped up after the President’s speech … and posted one last video as she entered the mayhem.
Ashli went live on Facebook Wednesday in the moments leading up to the coup attempt in D.C., boasting that she was part of the mob marching to the Capitol. …”
Unlike Ali Alexander, she really was willing to die to “Stop the Steal.” She was one of the thousands of utterly sincere and earnest Patriots who came to DC and took the rhetoric at face value and didn’t understand that it was a grift, performance art and a political stunt. When Jack Posobiec said that Trump was leading MAGA in a “march on the Capitol,” Babbitt and others took that to mean he was “Crossing the Rubicon” and that “1776 Will Commence Again” and that the “Storm” had arrived.
Trump was “marching on” the Capitol.
This was a miscommunication. The intent was that Trump supporters would walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, gather outside the Capitol and make a lot of noise to pressure Republicans not to certify the 2020 election. Trump himself only said that the crowd was going to “walk down” Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, but influencers like Jack Posobiec jazzed it up. It was supposed to be a theatrical act while U.S. senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz engaged in their usual grandstanding. Those of us who understood this had tuned out and weren’t even watching the Stop the Steal rally until it turned violent.
“The politician she revered above all others had lost an election. She’d struggled with crippling amounts of debt. Her home state of California was locking down again because of a virus she believed was fiction.
As she walked west along the Mall on Wednesday, wearing a backpack emblazoned with the American flag, Ashli Babbitt was elated.
“It was amazing to get to see the president talk,” Babbitt said, beaming in a video she streamed on Facebook early Wednesday afternoon that was later published by TMZ. “We are now walking down the inaugural path to the Capitol building. Three million-plus people.” …
She avidly followed the QAnon conspiracy theory, convinced that Trump was destined to vanquish a cabal of child abusers and Satan-worshiping Democrats. She believed Wednesday would be “the storm,” when QAnon mythology holds that Trump would capture and execute his opponents. …
Like so many others, she believed Jan. 6 would be not a day of infamy, but an end to her troubles.
“Nothing will stop us,” she tweeted Jan. 5. “They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!”
It was the last thing she would write. …”
I find the whole thing sad.
I also blame the grifters, not the pawns who fell for cons like QAnon. They were the ones who flooded the internet and poisoned the minds of Trump’s base with this “trust the plan” nonsense. Ashli Babbitt was brave, patriotic and earnest and simply believed the awful things she had been told.
Note: If anyone should be arrested and put on trial for this, it is whoever has been running the “Q” scam.
