Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot to death on Jan. 6, 2021, by Black Capitol police officer Michael Byrd as she sought to enter the Capitol building through a door whose glass had already been shattered. She was not armed. Donald Trump and his Republican followers celebrated her as a martyr to the cause, while the response of the “compassionate” Left has been radically different. An Associated Press article of Jan. 2022 by Michael Biesecker is typical of the narrative promoted by that sector.
Biesecker paints Babbitt as an absolutely horrible person, citing her infidelity to her first husband, a 2016 road rage incident in which she was charged with multiple misdemeanors, as well as her many angry pro-Trump screeds posted online against the Covid 19 mandates, illegal immigration, etc.. Her second husband Aaron, on the other hand, says most everyone who met her loved her.
Ashli was no doubt a complex person and I am in no position to deny that she could be obnoxious at times. But the implied message of the Biesecker article would appear to be that her death was neither here nor there, given her obvious flaws. His indifference to the fact that she was killed for no legitimate reason is outrageous. That his disdain for her political views clearly fed that indifference is disgusting. How much, one wonders, did political bias influence the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington D.C. in its conclusion that Michael Byrd had acted in self-defense in shooting Babbitt? In August of 2023, Byrd was actually granted a promotion! Yet both the documented facts of the event as well as his attempts to defend himself over the last 3 years do nothing but incriminate him! Admitting that he did not know if Babbitt was armed, he has nevertheless said he fired upon her as a “last resort.” That makes no sense whatsoever! In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, he declared: “I know that day I saved countless lives.” That would suggest there was significant evidence that the “insurrectionists” were intent on slaughtering the occupants of the Capitol! But as argued by those who maintain that Jan. 6 was an expression of political dissent rather than an insurrection, its participants did not come equipped with deadly firearms! In March of 2021, NPR [National Public Radio] of Wash. D.C., clearly attempting to vilify Trump’s supporters, pointed out that while yes, they may not have borne firearms, they did come equipped with pepper spray, stun guns and baseball bats! But given that the Capitol Police were all armed with deadly weapons, did pepper spray, etc. in any way justify Byrd’s contention that he had no other choice but to open fire on Ashli Babbitt, that indeed he saved “countless lives” that day?
Michael Byrd shot an unarmed White woman from close range for no reason whatsoever. I am not suggesting he ought to be sent away for life. He no doubt panicked given the mounting chaos of the day. But what I can say with certainty is that if he were a White cop who shot an unarmed Black woman in similar circumstances, he would presently be in prison and cited relentlessly by the Left as just another example of the “systemic racism” not only of America’s police but of the country as a whole. Such is the Identity Politics poisoning our culture. Such is the double standard of the contemporary Left, a schizophrenic standard from which the murder of a committed “conservative” is really nothing to get excited about.