Daniel Penny’s Victory Tour Encapsulates the Current State of the GOP

Donald Trump and JD Vance hosted the 26-year-old, who became a right-wing hero after killing a homeless Black man in 2023, in their suite at the Army v. Navy football game on Saturday.

By Kylie Cheung  |  December 16, 2024 | 11:45am
Photo: Twitter @JDVance Politics
Daniel Penny’s Victory Tour Encapsulates the Current State of the GOP

Last week, a Manhattan jury acquitted Daniel Penny, the 26-year-old white man who choked Jordan Neely, a homeless, unarmed Black man, to death on the subway in May 2023. (Penny initially faced charges of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter, but the manslaughter charge was dropped by prosecutors.) Because things can always get stupider, shortly after Penny’s acquittal, Vice President-elect JD Vance personally invited Penny to join him and Donald Trump in their suite at the Army-Navy football game in Maryland on Saturday. Vance called Penny, who strangled a man — who was in the middle of a mental health crisis — to death for six minutes on camera “a good guy.” He added that Penny was just a victim of “New York’s mob district attorney” who “tried to ruin his life for having a backbone.” 

In the special suite on Saturday, Penny joined Trump, who a different Manhattan jury found liable for sexual abuse in 2023; Elon Musk, who reportedly paid a $250,000 settlement to a flight attendant he allegedly sexually abused, and pressured at least one female subordinate to have children with him; and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary who allegedly raped a woman in 2017. For the last year, the right has propped up Penny as a hero who kept his fellow citizens safe, weaponizing a horrific tragedy to further fearmonger about public safety in New York City, Republicans’ favorite liberal disaster city. Trump and Vance’s decision to honor a killer in a suite stuffed with alleged sexual predators encapsulates the current state of the GOP: They present the greatest threat to our collective safety while invoking supposed dangers — distorted crime rates, homeless people in crisis, people of color, immigrants — to enact policies that further endanger us, and even to justify killing a homeless man.

Penny’s attorney, Steven Raisers, told Reuters last week that Penny doesn’t see his appearance alongside Trump and Vance “as a political statement” and is “viewing it as just basically an honor.” Of course, who can and can’t kill with impunity is fundamentally political. This is a country built on policies that create poverty and homelessness, which then punish those who fall victim to the system. Trump and Vance’s decision to honor Penny while shrugging off the man Penny killed is a political statement.

On May 1, 2023, inside a subway car, Neely shouted about being hungry and thirsty and said that he didn’t care if he died or went to jail. Penny came up from behind Neely and put him in a chokehold. Penny sustained the chokehold for about six minutes, even when it was clear that Neely was dying, and even when the subway doors opened and passengers could safely exit. “He’s dying. Let him go!” an unseen bystander said in the background of one video. During the trial earlier this month, some passengers testified that Neely made them feel nervous and unsafe, though some recounted that he didn’t approach any of them. In either case, making people uncomfortable by exposing them to your suffering shouldn’t be punishable by death.

In Penny’s first interview after being acquitted, he said he had no regrets because he couldn’t bear it if someone on the subway got hurt. In other words, he didn’t see Neely — a homeless man in crisis — as a human being who could be hurt. Penny’s appraisal of the situation builds on a year of both mainstream media coverage and right-wing talking points unabashedly dedicated to Neely’s dehumanization. Medical records reviewed during the trial showed that after being hospitalized for depression at 14, Neely was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Neely told a doctor in 2017 that his experiences with homelessness and poverty caused him to feel so hopeless he considered suicide. Shortly after Neely’s death, reporting came to light about his years-long struggles in the foster system, how he gave his own money earned from street dancing to fellow foster kids for food and clothes, and how he struggled after losing his mother, whose boyfriend was convicted of murdering her.

Penny killed a real person, a victim of numerous, intersecting systems of state violence — and he’s being rewarded for it. Rep.-elect Brandon Gill (R-Texas) declared over the weekend that the nation needs “a lot more Daniel Pennys.”

We’re all far less safe in a society where individuals effectively have legal permission to choke to death anyone who makes them uncomfortable in public. Similarly, we’re all far less safe in a society governed by the alleged sexual predators sipping beers alongside Penny in the Trump-Vance suite. 

 
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