MAGA is portraying Ashley Babbitt as a victim again.

 

Just the facts.

By Liz Giorgetti Katzen, PhD, Clinical Psychologist

MAGA is portraying Ashley Babbitt as a victim again.

A pattern: Ashli Babbitt goes berserk and, with depraved indifference to her own safety and the safety of others, violently smashes things to harm people when she is clearly the person in the wrong.

In 2016, Babbitt was criminally charged with reckless endangerment after she repeatedly smashed her SUV into a vehicle driven by an ex-girlfriend of Aaron Babbitt. The victim had been living with Mr. Babbitt when he had an affair with a coworker, Ashli, whom he later married. The victim moved on from her relationship with Mr. Babbitt, but she had to take out repeated restraining orders against Ashli Babbitt, culminating in the violent SUV attack that led to criminal charges.

In 2021, Ashli Babbitt was with a mob at the Capitol, violently and repeatedly smashing locked doors, until she was shot climbing through a smashed window to enter a part of the Capitol that hadn't been fully evacuated. The Capitol police lieutenant who subsequently shot her was visibly pointing a gun at her, and the mob was shouting "gun," but Ashli, perhaps fueled by manic rage, grandiosity, and entitlement, ignored the warnings, which ended in her being shot dead.

There are psychological echoes of the first incident in the second incident. The reckless, baseless rage, the smashing, depraved indifference to mortal danger--This was Ashli's M.O. when she became uncorked.

Of course, we cannot forget that Ashli Babbitt was shot that day doing what Donald Trump sent her there to do, which makes it doubly disgusting every time Trump blames the heroic Capitol police officer for her death. Ashli Babbitt was a reckless fool, but Donald Trump sent her on that fool's errand.