Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin apologises to Nancy Pelosi after joking about attack on her husband

‘It was a personal note and it was one between me and the speaker’

Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has apologised to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after joking about the attack on her husband Paul Pelosi.

Mr Youngkin privately sent a handwritten note to Ms Pelosi, according to HuffPost.

“The apology has been accepted,” a spokesperson for the speaker told the outlet.

“My full intention on my comments was to categorically state that violence and the kind of violence that was perpetrated against Speaker Pelosi’s husband is not just unacceptable, it’s atrocious. And I didn’t do a great job with that,” the governor told HuffPost. “And so listen, it was a personal note and it was one between me and the speaker, just to reflect those sentiments.”

On 28 October, suspect David DePape, 42, is reported to have broken into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home at some point after 2am. Mr Pelosi called 911 as Mr DePape appeared to be after his wife, who wasn’t present at the time.

When police arrived, Mr DePape reportedly attacked Mr Pelosi with a hammer. Mr Pelosi later had to have skull surgery but is expected to recover.

Mr DePape has been charged with assault, attempted murder and attempted kidnapping of a US official.

Law enforcement has alleged that Mr DePape planned to take the speaker hostage and break her kneecaps claiming that she was the “‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic Party”.

Just hours after the attack, Mr Youngkin used the attack during a speech for GOP House candidate Yesli Vega.

“Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house, he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to go do.”

The governor was roundly criticised for his comment, which Virginia Democrat Donald McEachin called “disgusting, vile, and crass”.

On 1 November, Mr Youngkin told Punchbowl News that “at the end of the day, I really wanted to express the fact that what happened to Speaker Pelosi’s husband was atrocious”.

“And I didn’t do a great job,” he added at the time.

Ms Pelosi revealed to CNN that her husband was so gravely injured following the hammer attack that surgeons had to “take off the skull, reshape it, and put it back”.

“It had cracked,” a shaken Ms Pelosi told CNN, adding that Paul Pelosi’s head was struck “on the top, in two places”.

“What they have to do is they have to take off the skull, reshape it, and put it back so it isn’t scratched or [could] pierce the brain,” Ms Pelosi told CNN, recalling her husband’s surgery.

She remembered it as “a pretty serious operation” and that her husband’s injuries were “drastic” and “pretty awful”.

“But the good news was … they told us it had not pierced his brain, which could be deadly,” she added.

The speaker said one of the more difficult things to handle is that the attacker was after her, not her husband, but he was still the one who was injured.

“For me, this is really the hard part – because Paul was not the target, and he’s the one who’s paying the price,” she said.

“It’s really sad because it is a flame that was fueled by misinformation … that has no place in our democracy,” she added.

She admitted that the attack on her husband may impact whether she chooses to retire from politics. The couple, both aged 82, have been married since the early 1960s.

Ms Pelosi shared a rare moment of levity when she spoke of the moment their son told Mr Pelosi that his wife was on her way to see him.

“The first thing he said [was] ‘oh, your mother’s gonna be very happy because the [Baltimore] Ravens won last night,’” the speaker said of her husband’s first words after coming out of surgery.

Ms Pelosi grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where both her father and her brother served as mayor.

“So we thought, ‘well, OK, he’s with it’,” the speaker told CNN.

While Ms Pelosi said her husband knows that he is in for a “long haul” towards recovery, she said he’s “such a gentleman, he’s not complaining”.

The speaker said she hadn’t yet heard any 911 calls or viewed any bodycam footage from the attack. She added that she hasn’t spoken about the attack with Mr Pelosi as it’s “too traumatizing”.

But she said she has heard that he “was cool. Paul’s cool,” adding that he “called 911 with enough information, but not too much information” to enrage the “threatening” attacker.

“He saved his life — Paul saved his own life with that call,” she said.