Pelosi in Brussels: A reminder of who's in charge and it's not Trump

Hey, guess who else went to the Munich Security Conference and then decided to announce to our European betters that President Trump is not the boss of her? Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that’s who. At least she waited until she landed in Brussels after the conference to make her grand statement, instead of doing it in Munich as Joe Biden did

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As you can imagine, the European press got a lot of pleasure in Pelosi’s statements. She and her delegation stopped in Brussels to reassure the EU that she’s in charge now, with her Democrat majority in the House so she’s controlling the agenda. Case in point: a resolution passed in the House on a strong bipartisan vote that affirmed support for NATO. When questioned as to why such a resolution only now passed, Pelosi was quick to remind everyone that she is just now back to leading the House. It was a version of hey, I got here as quick as I could:

Pelosi said that one European colleague had asked why the House of Representatives had only recently adopted a resolution in support of NATO. She said that she explained it is because she and the Democrats had only retaken control of the majority at the start of the year.

“I said because we just got the majority and then we can control, we can manage what goes on to the floor,” Pelosi said. “But once the Republican colleagues had the opportunity to vote on this, H.R. 676 NATO Support Act — what was it? 357 to 22 Noes. I think that that sends a very clear message.”

Pelosi added, “I don’t think that there’s any difference between Democrats and Republicans on our relationship with NATO. This is not partisan in any way.”

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Pelosi’s wingman, Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-VA), was happy to reaffirm Pelosi’s point that America is not a parliamentarian form of government. As he explained the equal branches of government, Pelosi leaned in to assert the House’s control of the purse.

“In terms of the question — is this a reassurance tour? I think it’s a reminder tour,” Connolly said, “that the United States government is not just one branch. And as the Speaker said, Article 1, the first Article in the constitution of the United States deals with the powers of the legislative branch not the executive branch and those powers include war and peace and even direction of the armed forces.”

Pelosi then leaned back toward the microphone to interject: “And the power of the purse.”

The Democrats and their base, the American media, continually claim that because of President Trump America is not exactly riding high in public opinion in foreign countries. Abandoning a long-time unwritten rule of decorum that no American elected official should travel outside of America and bad-mouth the sitting American president or his administration, neither Nancy Pelosi nor Joe Biden seem to mind planting seeds of uncertainty. This was a deliberate jab in the eye to President Trump.

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Pelosi met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as EU President Jean-Claude Juncker. Pelosi’s bravado may have been a bit uncomfortable for Stoltenberg as he has been talking up the success of President Trump’s demands of NATO countries to pay their fair share and catch up on delinquent payments while making the connection with defense spending. Stoltenberg even repeated his praise at the Munich Security Conference. I wonder if Pelosi was present for that speech.

“I’m saying that his message has been very clear and that his message is having an impact on defense spending. And this is important because we need fairer burden sharing in the NATO alliance,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

This trend isn’t good and can easily evolve into more Obama-style apology tours of Europe. Talk about an embarrassment.

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