House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, apparently secure in the knowledge that her serial distortions and wild revisionism of very recent history will go largely ignored or unchallenged by the news media, is growing more brazen in her gaslighting of America. Last week, Pelosi made the utterly false claim that Republicans, not Democrats, had held up legislative action to replenish the government's small business paycheck protection rescue fund. This is simply a lie:
Unreal, Nancy Pelosi blames Mitch McConnell for delaying the latest Wuhan coronavirus relief bill: "Mitch McConnell likes to say that we delayed the bill. No, he delayed the bill...So he was the one wasting time." pic.twitter.com/DUE2spL7n0
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) April 22, 2020
The record is crystal clear, and we helped establish that record, in real time. Fox News anchor Bret Baier dismantled Pelosi's mind-bending spin with a fact check -- which, if anything, pulled punches by referring to her dishonest blame-shifting as "jiujitsu":
“Let's set the record straight. Once Republicans found out the PPP was going to run dry, there was a clean bill to replenish it. Nancy Pelosi didn't go for it. Period. So to say that the delay was Mitch McConnell's fault is just political jiujitsu for Nancy Pelosi.” @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/YUwqxRTUsT
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) April 23, 2020
Not content to stop there, Pelosi engaged in more flagrant gaslighting in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, deflecting a question about Joe Biden's belated endorsement of President Trump's imposition of restrictions on travel from China in late January. Biden's team is trying to pretend that the presumptive Democratic nominee didn't blast Trump's move as xenophobic at the time, claiming that he's been supportive all along. This does not pass the smell test. But in a lumbering effort to sidestep the reality that Trump's decision was correct, Pelosi is going even further by actually criticizing the executive action as not harsh enough:
Speaker Pelosi on Trump's China travel restriction: "Tens of thousands of people were still allowed in from China. It wasn't as it is described as this great moment. ... If you're going to shut the door because you have an evaluation of an epidemic, then shut the door" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/jpKFxYVCu6
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 26, 2020
She levels this criticism with zero credibility. As we established last week, the president was criticized aggressively for his January 31 move severely limiting travel to the United States from China. Weeks after Trump implemented this emergency policy, Pelosi pulled her publicity stunt in San Francisco's Chinatown, which she has since been forced to unconvincingly explain away. The notion that Pelosi would have supported Trump slamming the door shut entirely to China in January, even going so far as to bar American citizens and permanent residents from returning home (a wrinkle that Pelosi even acknowledges in her answer above), is patently ridiculous.
Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- knows that she and virtually every Democrat would have blown a gasket. Many Republicans would have, too. Nobody should entertain the preposterous fiction that Pelosi's response to that hypothetical overreach would have been, "but has the president closed the door hard tightly enough?" C'mon. I'll leave you with Pelosi endorsing Joe Biden:
It will come as no shock whatsoever that Pelosi praised Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford as heroic and courageous, yet has had absolutely nothing to say about the woman who's made allegations against the man she's now backing for president. Who's surprised? Women must be believed, you see, unless there's an election to be won.
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