The Ellingsons of Grace City, North Dakota, buried their son Cayler on Monday. At age 18, his funeral came decades too soon.
While the Ellingsons have been mourning for more than a week, the dinosaur news organizations could not care less — never mind care about the national political significance of his premature death.
At about 2:55 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 18, a police affidavit explains, a local officer was “requested to respond to northern Foster County for a fatality hit and run accident” in McHenry, North Dakota.
The deceased was Ellingson, a recent Carrington High School graduate and aspiring ultrasound technician.
This would have been merely a tragic rural death, but for these crucial details:
A thoroughly unpresentable motorist named Shannon Brandt, 41, was at the scene. Police say his blood alcohol level was 0.08. That equals North Dakota’s threshold for driving while intoxicated.
“Brandt stated that the pedestrian called some people, and Brandt was afraid they were coming to get him,” the sworn statement continues. “Brandt admitted to State Radio that he hit the pedestrian and that the pedestrian was part of a Republican extremist group.”
So, Ellingson’s killing was politically relevant.
Not so fast, the Associated Press insists.
“There is little indication that an 18-year-old who died after being struck by an SUV in North Dakota was a political extremist like the driver claimed,” the AP reported on Sunday. It cited North Dakota Highway Patrol Captain Bryan Niewind. He said Friday that this case “is not political in nature at all.” He added, “There is no evidence to support Brandt’s claim on the 911 call that Mr. Ellingson was a Republican extremist.”
Justin McDonald, a bar owner in New Rockford, knows the Ellingsons. He told the AP that Cayler enjoyed autocross racing, hunting, and his family’s Lake Juanita cabin. However, “There was absolutely nothing political in him that I’ve ever seen.”
Even if Ellingson were a Republican extremist, so what? Far-right beliefs should not sentence him to death. The proper response to GOP extremists, whatever that means, is to defeat them at the polls, not run them over with Ford Explorers.
And if Ellingson were not a Republican — extremist or otherwise — Brandt believed he was. Indeed, Brandt could have been totally unhinged, looked at Ellingson, and thought: Aha! There goes a Republican extremist now. Let me mow him down!
Biden’s shrieking condemnation of “ultra-MAGA Republicans,” “extremists,” and “semi-fascists” could have gotten Brandt so hopped-up that he targeted a “Republican extremist” who was not one, much as one evil idiot killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, after the 9/11 attacks, believing him to be Muslim.
What counts here are Brandt’s motive and frame of mind, not Ellingson’s politics.
Likewise, someone fueled by anti-Muslim rage is not suddenly innocent of such bias just because his victim turned out to be Sikh. The killer would remain lethally Islamophobic, albeit dreadful at distinguishing Muslims from Sikhs.
Brandt also might have panicked and wondered: What excuse would justify my hit and run? I know! I’ll say that the guy I hit is a Republican extremist. It’s open season on them.
Biden’s acidic rhetoric might have taught Brandt that the “I killed a Republican extremist” card would get him out of jail. In fact, Brandt walked free after posting bail of just $50,000.
The AP’s attempt to depoliticize this story as just a mundane drunk-driving death crashed into a wall of logic. This once-venerable news organization should be ashamed of its pro-Democrat cover-up, especially when a cadaver runs through it.
“Just recently, a young 18-year-old man from North Dakota … was targeted and killed, run down in cold blood with an SUV by a radical-Left maniac,” former President Donald J. Trump said Friday at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. “This guy ran him down, and not one mainstream media network has even mentioned this horrible crime…. Think of it the other way. Supposing a mad person ran down somebody on the other side. It would be the biggest story you’ve ever seen. It’s a disgrace.”
“This young boy, this was a young man. Wonderful, with a great future,” Trump added. “And I’m just telling you, just so handsome and so beautiful and so great. And he got run down by a radical Left nut job here.”
Once again, Trump is right.
“While the Fox News Channel and Newsmax both started reporting this story on the evening of September 20, NewsBusters found zero coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC,” the Media Research Center’s Tim Graham observed. “How about our taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR? Zero coverage. The New York Times and The Washington Post had nothing.”
While CBS Evening News studiously ignored this story on that date, it spared one minute and 20 seconds to discuss the photography of Gordon Parks. NBC Nightly News couldn’t be bothered with Cayler Ellingson. However, it devoted four minutes and 45 seconds to declaring that gold mining has placed the Peruvian Amazon “in peril.”
The fake-news blackout continues.
“I did find numerous hits through the weekend for FNC, FBN, and Newsmax — but nothing on any other channel,” the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker told me. As of Tuesday afternoon: Still nothing.
“Doesn’t Cayler Ellingson’s death deserve national attention? Or is it just too contrary to the narrative that all the political violence is presumed to be coming from the conservative side?” Graham wondered.
“This lines up with the recent murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German by a Democrat county official, Robert Telles,” Graham noted. “Since the victim was a journalist, this has gotten some national attention, but it came with a nasty tendency to avoid describing Telles as a Democrat.”
Graham concluded: “It makes it harder to speculate that Democratic politicians are spurring violence through using hateful rhetoric if media outlets seek to squelch the idea there’s any politically motivated violence by Democrats.”
The Left’s political violence roars on.
• Two days after Ellingson was killed, an 84-year-old pro-lifer in Odessa, Michigan, was shot after a “heated conversation” about Proposal 3, a pro-abortion referendum. On Sept. 20, the unidentified woman was handing out literature against the referendum. While canvassing door-to-door, she exchanged words with a pro-choice voter. As the victim walked away, a male third party shot her in the back of her shoulder, according to the Epoch Times. She was hospitalized and released. Her assailant remains at large.
• In a Monday afternoon email to supporters, Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons denounced an ugly, bloody attack in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
“What if I told you a violent gang of ‘Squad’ sympathizers beat up a conservative gay Black man outside an event featuring not just U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, but her whole contingent?” Lyons asked. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cori Bush. Rashida Tlaib. Ilhan Omar. Ayanna. I’d like to introduce them to Shawn Nelson of Boston.” Nelson and Pressley’s GOP opponent, Donnie Palmer, demonstrated against these five hard-left congresswomen.
And what thanks did Nelson get for practicing his First Amendment right to criticize these politicians?
“A gay Black Republican was sent to the hospital when he decided to protest an event featuring ‘The Squad,’” Lyons explained.
Massachusetts Republican Shawn Nelson after he says he was beaten by alleged far-left activists outside of an appearance by the Squad. (Photos: Massachusetts Republican Party)
Two videos on YouTube confirm that Nelson was confronted and pummeled by men whom Lyons says were supporters of the Squad. These shocking images show a Republican terrorized by left-wing violence, rather than the reverse, which Biden screams is rampant.
“Police arrested Foster Starkes of Cambridge and Andwain Coleman of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio,” the Boston Globe reported, to its credit. “Both men are scheduled to be arraigned Monday at Somerville District Court on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.”
• Also on Saturday, two campaign volunteers for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knocked on doors as part of Abbott’s reelection effort. Someone disagreed, chased them toward their vehicle, tried to yank them from it, and tore off the car’s side-view mirrors. Police recovered some of the van’s parts from the suspect’s trash can and arrested him for criminal mischief.
How much coverage did these three left-wing attacks on conservatives generate? Baker told me Tuesday: “No one here has seen any of them mentioned on any national TV newscast.”
Why this staggering, widespread lack of attention?
This mounting mayhem goes 180 degrees opposite Joe Biden’s midterm battle cry: Save democracy from the violent ultra-MAGA Republican extremists.
Whatever. If Biden’s overheated, vicious rhetoric moves his followers to chase, beat, shoot, and murder his GOP opponents, who cares?
This is the unmistakable message that the Big Media trumpet with their sarcophagal silence.
Manhattan-based political commentator Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
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