But she does know how to throw Trump for a loop
The photo above is what Trump’s got “pinned” to the top of his Twitter feed this morning. Not anything about giving billions of dollars in aid to farmers hurt by retaliation to his China tariffs (never mind that that seems a lot like socialism to us; that’s a story for another day). Not anything about giving his Attorney General virtually carte blanche to reveal classified information to the American public regarding his “investigation of the investigators”, which has also been a strong Trump priority. None of that. This.
Things are getting real ugly real fast. And this seems like a beginning, not an end. The Speaker of the House getting under the President’s skin; describing the President as throwing a “temper tantrum” during his staged display of outrage this week over Democrats’ insistence they continue to investigate him.
Pelosi adds a real zinger: perhaps the President resorted to stomping around and grandstanding because he lacks the leadership qualities necessary to get the job done, and he knows it. The implication strongly being, for lack of a better way of putting it, he may not be man enough for the job…
Here’s Pelosi (click on the photo to watch):
Trump countered with a truly bizarre retort, which demonstrated more than anything that Pelosi’s words had really hit home. At an appearance where he was supposed to expand upon that latest $16-billion farm assistance package, Trump instead went around the room, asking various members of his White House staff whether he had indeed thrown a tempter tantrum. Of course, all of them replied the President had been very calm, was on a very even keel, didn’t yell at anybody (although one quipped had he done so, it would’ve very much been called for.) This went on for nearly 10 minutes, so about 25% of the entire news conference. Don’t believe us? Here’s video of a big chunk of that very strange event (click on the photo to watch):
You know, we once had a boss who was known for yelling at everybody at the slightest provocation. Had we been asked by him if that was the case, in public, in front of him, in front of the media, we also would’ve said no. Why? Because we didn’t want to get yelled at (also because we were team players, and often believed in his larger missions). And also because frankly, there wouldn’t have been much upside for us in coming clean in the context of our careers from that day forward.
Trump’s also apparently decided to flog a false narrative that Democrats, led by Pelosi, are hell-bent on impeaching him. Pelosi, who’s been against beginning impeachment proceedings, says that’s because the President wants to be impeached by Congress, knowing full-well he won’t be convicted by the Senate and forced to leave office, and then he can declare that he “won” and has been fully vindicated yet again.
Trump isn’t stopping there either, jumping on a bandwagon that’s been circulating around far-Right social media for several days: that Pelosi’s often drunk in public, or alternately, has lost her mind. That all apparently started with several clips the Washington Post has proven were doctored to slow Pelosi’s speech to 75% of normal speed to make it sound like she was slurring her words, and then adjusting the pitch back up to the level of her normal voice. Here’s a clip from the Post illustrating all that (click on the photo to watch):
But that didn’t stop Trump from echoing that sentiment, several times saying things of Pelosi like: “she’s lost it”, and she’s “disintegrated before us”. And then, coincidentally(?) one of Trump’s favorite Fox programs picked up the ball, doing an entire segment headlined “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE”. In which they pondered: “She cannot put a subject with a predicate in the same sentence. What’s going on? “. Which then became the source of Trump’s pinned Tweet we started out with today.
Maybe this is all fair play: liberals have never been shy about jumping all over Trump’s various mispronunciations, misspellings, misuse of words and punctuation.
So why are we making a big deal of it? Because if there’s ever been a time to cut Pelosi some slack and go with her program–at least for a little while–this is it. We’ve heard so much griping about how hard it is to knock Trump off-message, and land shots that stick, and go mano-a-mano with him. Well, guess what, she is.
We agree completely with Rep. Ro Khanna (D) CA, (who hasn’t always been a full-throated Pelosi backer), when he Tweets:
“Speaker Pelosi is the only politician in this country who’s gone toe to toe with Donald Trump and won.”
