The details of the crime are almost immaterial to Abbott, who’s motivated purely by political considerations. The Texas governor has been rooting around for issues to make his congenitally dull brand more appealing to national conservatives, and this is a good one. Foster was attending a protest against police violence in Austin when he was shot, the sort of protest right-wingers in Texas have long opposed. Perry, an Army sergeant who was working as a rideshare driver that night, was the right kind of person for Abbott to back.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition,” according to a modern aphorism. “To wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Foster, an Air Force veteran, was legally carrying a rifle in accordance with state law as he protested police violence. He is the man whom the law binds but does not protect. Perry was an Uber driver who drove into the protest, saw Foster approach with his rifle, and shot him five times with a gun he was also legally allowed to carry, claiming the right to self-defense. Perry is the man who the law protects but does not bind.
The case concerning the shooting of Foster was not a he said, he said. In his statement to police following the shooting, which was videotaped and shown to the jury in full, Perry didn’t claim that Foster pointed his gun at him—which itself would not be sufficient cause to claim self-defense, under the instructions provided to the jury, but would have helped his case. No witnesses claimed Foster had been aiming at Perry, either. (Perry later claimed Foster had raised the barrel of his gun, though that too is disputed by witnesses.) Instead Perry, who says he’d been distracted before he turned into the path of the protest, said that he “didn’t want to give [Foster] a chance to aim at me.” So Perry shot him five times with a .357 revolver through the window of his car.
Immediately, Perry became a cause célèbre to conservatives who argued he had put down a dangerous element destroying the city. In their telling, Foster had been aiming his gun at Perry, who had narrowly escaped with his life. José Garza, the Travis County district attorney who brought the case, became a “[George] Soros prosecutor” who was a “cancerous tumor” and an “evil, subversive, dangerous Marxist,” according to one very dyspeptic commentator who was retweeted by Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi. Abbott called Garza a “rogue” prosecutor, without clarifying what he had gone rogue from. Republican congressman Chip Roy, who represents a district that includes a slice of Austin, argued that the verdict was a decision “in favor of the lawless over those defending against the lawless.”
The night of the conviction, Tucker Carlson urged Abbott to issue a pardon. He told his audience he had asked Abbott on the show and that Abbott had declined. He scorched the governor for that: “So that is Greg Abbott’s position—there is no right of self-defense in Texas.” Carlson’s segments go for marching orders in today’s GOP, and nobody can afford to get on his bad side.
