Hoo boy: Pelosi flips out on Wolf Blitzer for asking why she won't accept Trump's stimulus offer

Via the Free Beacon, I know the clip is long but you should carve out time to watch it all. And if you can’t, at least watch from 10:50 to the end. You’ll see something amazing, almost unprecedented.

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You’ll see a news anchor treating the most powerful Democrat in the country the way Republicans are often treated by the media.

And although Pelosi keeps her composure and smiles throughout, she is incensed. The entire point of her stimulus standoff with Trump is to give the media a reason to say in the final weeks of the campaign, “Why won’t the president make a deal to save the economy and keep Americans from starving?”

So here’s Blitzer turning around and asking her: Why won’t you make a deal to save the economy and keep Americans from starving?

And he’s not all that polite about it either. He keeps his composure too, but by the end of the clip he’s basically asking her how she can live with herself knowing that families are desperate for aid while these negotiations drag out.

“What makes me amused, if it weren’t so sad,” she says at one point, “is how you all think that you know more about the suffering of the American people than those of us who are elected by them to represent them at that table.” I can easily imagine Ted Cruz saying the same thing to a reporter. At times she seems right on the edge of launching into a full-blown Trumpian rant about the “Fake News Media.”

And Blitzer wasn’t even that hard on her. If he wanted to twist the knife, he could have asked her, “Isn’t it true that you don’t want a deal at all because the failure of a new stimulus agreement will strengthen Biden’s case against Trump?”

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By the way, the phenomenon he describes of some lefties like Ro Khanna nudging Pelosi to take Trump’s offer and get the money out the door is a real thing. I don’t know how extensive it is, but this argument at Slate to that effect caught my eye a few days ago. Time really does matter here for Americans who are hurting and the political risk to Democrats in doing a deal is minimal. Biden’s lead is probably too large now for a stimulus bargain to put a meaningful dent in it, and it remains a very open question whether the Senate GOP can be cowed by Trump into rubber-stamping a package as large as $1.8 trillion, even with the obvious electoral incentives to do so. Frankly, at this point, Senate Republicans being blamed for blocking a bill is arguably better for Pelosi’s party than Trump being blamed since many battleground Senate races are tighter than the presidential race is.

I thought I’d seen everything 2020 could conceivably throw at us but CNN’s most mild-mannered anchor cornering the Speaker of the House on a policy matter of momentous importance wasn’t on my bingo card. Enjoy.

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