Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on the nation to show Daniel Penny that “America has his back.” Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has asked the governor of New York to pardon him. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy donated $10,000 to his legal defense fund.
Republican hopefuls have come out in support of Penny, a Marine veteran videotaped holding an agitated black passenger in a chokehold on the New York subway, killing him. The passenger, Jordan Neely, 30, died of neck compression, according to the medical examiner.
unintentional homicide
Penny is charged with manslaughter. His lawyers maintain that he acted in self-defense.
He is already a hero to many Republicans, who herald him as a Good Samaritan who stepped up for others in a Democratic-ruled city where crime rates have risen. Support has been strong, despite the fact that Neely, who was black, did not attack anyone in the car before Penny, who is white, applied the key.
The rush with which they came to Penny’s defense is reminiscent of how then-President Donald Trump and others in the Republican hierarchy supported Kyle Rittenhouse during the 2020 presidential election. Rittenhouse, a white teenager who killed two men and wounded a third during a riotous night of protests in Wisconsin following the death of a black man, he was acquitted by the jury.
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott recently promised to pardon Daniel Perry, a white Army sergeant, sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2020 fatal shooting of a gunman during a public rights march. black Black Lives Matter in Austin, the state capital.
attack on democrats
The Republicans try to attack the Democrats on the grounds of rising crime rates. The Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee traveled to New York last month, before Neely’s death, for a hearing on “victims of violent crime in Manhattan.”
Democrats and advocates of racial justice say the Republican message about restoring “law and order” taps into deep-seated racism.
“His program to win elections is based on taking the worst of human nature and finishing it off with division and fear,” said Jumaane Williams, a Democrat, the New York ombudsman. “And if the race and class factors are there, it’s like a Christmas present for them.”
Known to some subway users as a Michael Jackson impersonator, Neely suffered from mental disorders and had been frequently arrested. Some present during the event said that he had yelled at the passengers and that he had asked them for money in an aggressive manner, but without touching anyone.
Christopher Borick, director of the Institute for Public Opinion at Muhlenberg University, believes that for Republican candidates Penny’s cause is one more way to spark enthusiasm among their supporter base.
“It has very few downsides within the Republican electorate because it coincides so perfectly with issues that are so incredibly important to Republican voters in law and order and in line with their narrative of the degeneracy of urban life,” Borick notes. “That’s the message, the message from Trump and his Republican bloc, that the ‘crazy’ are a threat and we must do what we can to protect ‘Americans’ however we can.”