Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was asked in February about the noticeable back-and-forth jousting with his Florida counterpart, Republican Ron DeSantis.
Both DeSantis and, to a much lesser degree, Abbott are considered possible 2024 presidential candidates, and so they appear to be more or less engaging in an unspoken competition to effectively out-cruel each other over policy.
So far, the results have culminated in each governor shipping undocumented migrants to states with Democratic governors, restricting abortion, expanding gun rights and limiting or flat-out banning the mention of race, sexuality and gender in schools.
All of it has been done for the sake of satiating the mean-spirited impulses that fuel the modern conservative movement with the hopes of building up enough appearances on the Fox “News” prime-time bloc to garner sufficient support to launch the perfectly bigoted presidential campaign.
Abbott still won’t cop to what drives his decision to use governance to troll and harm people, though, telling The Texas Tribune when asked about DeSantis, “The reality is we really just focus on Texas and working for our constituents here in our state.”
That does not explain the latest example of Abbott’s desperate and increasingly dangerous attempts to build a national following: calling for the pardon of a man convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin in 2020.
Daniel Perry was recently convicted of murdering Garrett Foster from his car in downtown Austin in July 2020, two months after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
After Perry turned into a crowd of marching BLM protesters, he drove his car into a group that included Foster. Foster, a white Air Force veteran, was legally carrying an AK-47, but it was Perry who shot Foster five times through his car window with a handgun. Witnesses said Foster never raised his rifle.
It only took a day for Abbott to rally behind a convicted murderer once Tucker Carlson got involved.
The just-fired host of ”Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which commanded a daily audience of well over 3 million, was used to effectively using his platform to punk Republican politicians into doing what he wanted.
So, on a recent Friday night airing of his show, Carlson called out Abbott for not agreeing to appear on the show to address Perry’s murder conviction.
Carlson said Abbott’s office suggested Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton instead, and that’s when the second most powerful man in the GOP called him out.
“So that is Greg Abbott’s position — there’s no right to self-defense in Texas,” Carlson claimed.
Less than 24 hours later, Abbott made his first public comments on Perry’s case on social media, promising a pardon for him.
“I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott also tweeted that Perry should have been protected by the state’s “stand your ground” laws, faulting a “progressive” district attorney for prosecuting him.
Have you caught all of the buzzwords?
The embattled Carlson, who recently lost his job (did I already mention that?) was not mentioned by name, but it’s not the first time Abbott has announced some policy in response to one of Carlson’s on-air rants.
He no longer has to; it’s evident who he is answering to.
As longtime Abbott observers have noted, during his eight years in office, the governor has largely waved off the countless pardon requests landing on his desk.
“This is unprecedented,” state Rep. Ron Reynolds, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said in a statement in response to Abbott’s pledge. “In a state where this governor often touts the ‘rule of law’ and cracking down on crime, here we see him openly stating his intention of pardoning a convicted murderer who took the life of a protester.”
Abbott, a former state Supreme Court justice and three-term Texas attorney general, is letting us know how justice bends to the will of those with power, even for those who become among the pettiest public officials serving in government.
Since Abbott’s decision, it has been revealed that for years Perry sent messages online containing racist memes, racist language and threats of violence against Black people and Muslims.
A state district judge unsealed court records last week, and in the 76 pages filed by Travis County prosecutors, the Army sergeant said he was a racist.
“Black Lives Matter is racist to white people.... It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys,” Perry wrote.
Weeks before Perry shot Foster, he wrote in a May 2020 Facebook message exchange with a friend that he “might have to kill a few people” rioting outside his apartment complex.
The friend wrote to Perry: “Can you catch me a negro daddy.”
“That is what I am hoping,” Perry said in response.
Abbott has yet to respond to reports about these messages, but I genuinely fear it may not matter to Abbott because it doesn’t matter to the base he’s appealing to.
Tucker Carlson, like many on the right, has increasingly embraced men like Daniel Perry.
Carlson is the same person who gave a sympathetic interview to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen who killed two protesters and wounded a third in 2020 during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“What a sweet kid. I think that comes through loud and clear,” Carlson said to his viewers during a break from the interview. “Imagine putting that kid in jail.”
This is the party of “stand your ground” laws, the permission slip to kill enemies ― real or imagined ― and the party that has since set its sights on making it legal to run over protesters.
Republican lawmakers in states including North Dakota, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and, of course, Texas proposed bills that would make it legal for drivers to hit peaceful protesters.
The Republican Party is one of white grievance and vengeance with a conservative media ecosystem that only feeds that anger, and the leaders of the GOP would rather capitulate to it than challenge it.
Abbott even seems to revel in it. It was clear when we went on Fox News to troll Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) while Texans froze during another failure of the state’s power grid, but his depravity and desperation for attention are only growing more dangerous as he pushes for this pardon.
Abbott is a goofy, hateful man trying to troll his way to relevancy in a Republican presidential primary. It will never happen, but that doesn’t matter when people suffering in vain suffer the same as those in Florida and elsewhere under similarly cruel Republican governance.
To me, it is yet another reminder of why Democrats should not give up on Texas and, generally speaking, should start making a bigger fuss of how blatantly racist and violent the opposition party is ― and what media outlets promote them.