Pelosi on CNN: America is suffering from "Trump's virus", you know

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been on a roll lately. Her verbal attacks on President Trump and his administration have noticeably escalated and her words are more coarse than ever. Her latest off-the-wall remarks happened Tuesday on CNN.

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Nancy Pelosi seems to be upset that President Trump has begun Season Two of the coronavirus press briefings. By most accounts, the first briefing held Tuesday after a several month-long hiatus went quite well for the president. There was one bizarre remark when he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged pimp and partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump said he “wishes her well”. Why? I think it was just an off the cuff remark meant to nip that line of questioning in the bud. Otherwise, Trump handled the press briefing well. It was brief, by Trump’s standards, and even when the press corps chose to simply personally attack him instead of asking pertinent questions, he stayed on topic. So, Pelosi went on CNN to up the ante and label the coronavirus as “Trump’s virus”.

During an interview on CNN, though, Pelosi suggested that the president’s efforts are too little, too late.

“I think with the president’s comments today, he has recognized the mistakes that he has made by now embracing mask-wearing and the recognition that this is not a hoax, it is a pandemic that has gotten worse before it gets better because of his inaction and, in fact, clearly, it is the Trump virus,” Pelosi said.

“Well, what do you mean when you say the ‘Trump virus,'” CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked.

“The Trump virus,” Pelosi reiterated. “If he had said months ago ‘Let’s wear a mask, let’s socially-distance’ instead of having rallies or political whatever they were, then more people would have followed his lead. He’s the president of the United States, instead of being a bad example, making it like a manhood thing not to wear a mask.”

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Here is the problem with San Fran Nan’s criticism about face masks – Pelosi was further behind in encouraging the wearing of masks than Trump and his coronavirus task force was from the beginning. He did, in fact, say months ago that people should wear masks as the policy reversed from the original guidance from medical experts across the board. CDC, Dr. Fauci, the Surgeon General, and others in the public eye during the coronavirus pandemic outbreak all said that face masks were not necessary in the beginning. By April, though, that guidance changed and Trump delivered his message, too. He can be dinged for not embracing wearing a face mask himself to set an example but Pelosi is wrong when she blames him for not encouraging others to wear a face mask.

On April 3, the Trump administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed their policies on face masks and said all Americans — not, as they previously said, just medical workers — should wear cloth face coverings. As of Wednesday, COVID-19 had claimed at least 140,909 lives in the U.S. and infected more than 3.9 million people.

Unlike New York Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s mandate to wear masks in stores, however, the federal government’s recommendations are voluntary. What’s more, Trump at the time signaled his staunch resistance to wearing a mask. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” he said. “Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens — I just don’t see it.”

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Trump’s vanity sometimes gets in the way but he is now embracing face masks as a tool to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. He acknowledged that the epidemic will get worse before it gets better. His tone was somber during the press conference. Pelosi sounds like a partisan hack instead of someone in one of the highest positions in the U.S. government.

Nancy Pelosi was walking supporters through the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco while the White House Coronavirus Task Force correctly identified the origins of the virus as Chinese. Pelosi and Democrats were upset that the Chinese government was labeled the culprit as the virus spread across the globe. This was at the time the task force was beginning to warn Americans to social distance and protect themselves. Pelosi also didn’t require members of Congress to wear face masks until mid-June. She can’t have this argument both ways. She blasts Trump for not listening to the science community but from the very beginning – at the end of January – Trump formed the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Coordinated by Vice-President Pence, who had some experience on pandemics as Governor of Indiana during the MERS outbreak, the task force is led by Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Fauci, both experts in viruses and pandemics. There is no shortage of scientific input.

Pelosi knows that Season One of the coronavirus press briefings were huge rating successes. CNN got so frustrated that the network just stopped carrying them. Imagine a cable network not carrying such important public health briefings out of spite against a president it despises. It is no wonder CNN has such low ratings across the board.

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When asked by Wolf Blitzer if she is pointing the finger at President Trump for the thousands of deaths of Americans from the coronavirus, she said yes. That is the Democrat line – blame Trump, not the Communist Chinese. She also has remained silent as some state and local leaders have made some really tragic decisions, like Governor Cuomo who killed so many elderly people in nursing homes by moving COVID-19 patients into those facilities, or Mayor de Blasio who left subways and other public transportation running at full capacity. There’s plenty of blame to go around, Pelosi just wants to point to Trump and not honestly acknowledge other mistakes.

The 2020 election playbook for Democrats is clear – blame Trump for the coronavirus and for the economic disaster that the pandemic brought. Trump was cruising to re-election before the coronavirus outbreak and she knows it. Biden is having a problem garnering enthusiasm for his candidacy and his best campaign strategy is to remain hidden away in his basement. The last thing Democrats want is for the country to begin re-opening and learning to cope with the virus until a vaccine or therapeutic drugs are available. Democrats are actually pinning their hopes on America’s woes, not successes.

As I mentioned, Pelosi has been on a roll. She refers to the law enforcement officers sent to Portland as Trump’s “stormtroopers”. She also said, “fumigation” may be needed to remove President Trump from the White House if he loses the election in November” because he may refuse to leave if he loses in his re-election bid. Pelosi is not just any ordinary anti-Trump Democrat flapping her gums in interviews. She is the Speaker of the House. If she is so concerned about President Trump setting a good example, perhaps she should take stock of how she conducts herself. Pot/kettle, Nancy.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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