Earlier this week, Daniel Penny was acquitted of murder within the killing of Jordan Neely, a Black unhoused man, on the New York Metropolis subway in 2023. And Vice President-elect JD Vance has invited Penny to commingle with him and felon-elect Donald Trump on the Military-Navy soccer recreation on Saturday
“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”
Penny’s case was immediately polarizing. Outcries from minority communities and their allies referred to as for authorized retribution over Neely’s loss of life. To them, Neely’s loss of life was each avoidable and being handled otherwise, given he was an unhoused Black man.
“Jordan Neely was murdered,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on X shortly after the killing. And after New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams pushed again towards her phrasing, Ocasio-Cortez elaborated in an interview with The Reduce, saying, “I would like everyone to pretend [Neely] was their son. I would like anyone to look at that video [of his killing], see their son, and see if they would say the same thing.”
Nonetheless, conservative painted Penny as a hero, highlighting his previous as a Marine and arguing his proper to self-defense. And his actions grew to become a speaking level for right-leaning retailers and politicians.
And whereas many X customers applauded Vance for inviting Penny to the soccer recreation, others referred to as out the odd celebration of somebody who, whereas acquitted, nonetheless had a job within the loss of life of one other man.
“Yay let’s go hang out with a killer at a football game,” tweeted one account.
Kyle Rittenhouse, left, with backwards cap, walks alongside Sheridan Highway in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020, with one other armed civilian.
Penny’s case and the general public’s response are harking back to Kyle Rittenhouse’s case. Rittenhouse was discovered not responsible within the 2020 deadly capturing of two unarmed males and the wounding of a pistol-wielding third throughout protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
On the time, tensions have been extraordinarily excessive following a police officer’s homicide of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Protesters have been taking to the streets to specific their anger and heartbreak.
Later, at his trial, Rittenhouse claimed he’d traveled to Kenosha with different armed associates to guard non-public property from being destroyed through the unrest.
The case sparked outrage, which Trump fortunately stoked.
Trump invited Rittenhouse to Mar-a-Lago, telling Hannity that Rittenhouse was a “really nice young man.”
Making a jab on the lifeless and wounded, Trump added, “[Rittenhouse] was a fan, unlike the other guy.”
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