This Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) formally announced that the House would be pursuing formal articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. While the impeachment inquiry proceeded previously, she’d said that a next step of formality was still somewhat of an open question. As she concluded her Thursday press conference, conservative reporter James Rosen shouted out a question of whether Pelosi “hates” the president that provoked a heated reaction from the leader. It’s worth noting that Trump – not Pelosi – is the one who just recently derided one of his opponents as a “maniac.”
Pelosi asserted to the reporter:
‘I don’t hate anybody. I was raised in a Catholic house, we don’t hate anybody — not anybody in the world. So don’t you accuse me of any hate.’
Rosen interjected by resorting to comments from the belligerent Georgia Republican Congressman Doug Collins, who claimed that Democrats are pursuing impeachment “simply because they don’t like the guy.” Collins, to be clear, marked his own time at this Wednesday’s public House Judiciary Committee hearing by accusing the witnesses of being unprepared, complaining about the process, and other gaffes that were ignorant of the already established facts implicating the president in a scheme to exchange military aid for dirt on the Bidens from Ukraine. He’s not a credible source.
Pelosi — who’d been walking away from the stage — went back to the podium, where she insisted:
‘Let me say this — I think the president is a coward when it comes to helping our kids who are afraid of gun violence. I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our DREAMers, of which we’re very proud. I think he is in denial about the climate crisis. However, that’s about the election. Take it up in the election. This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office, and as a Catholic, I resent you using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the president, and I still pray for the president… So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.’
Watch:
Q: "Do you hate the president?"@SpeakerPelosi: "I don't hate anybody…As a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me. I don't hate anyone…So, don't mess with me when it comes to words like that."
Full video: https://t.co/l9peY9RTzl pic.twitter.com/zpqUaCcVrS
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 5, 2019
As she indicated, Trump has at times gotten almost unbelievably brazen in his ditching of the Constitution. He has repeatedly claimed that Article II, which establishes the powers of the presidency, lets him do whatever he wants. (It doesn’t.) He’s derided the clause prohibiting presidents from accepting foreign gifts while in office “phony.” (It’s not.) He actively flaunts these and other Constitutional provisions through means like his quid pro quo scheme targeting Ukraine.
He’s responded to criticism of his behavior by insisting, on the one hand, that he did nothing wrong, and topping that off with claims that those seeking to hold him accountable are mentally unfit to be in their present positions. To be clear, though, he’s the one who has lied thousands upon thousands of times since taking office and thereby seems untethered from reality — not Pelosi!
