President Trump’s reelection campaign recommenced with a triumphant return to the stage on Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On Sunday, a familiar media pattern emerged in response to Trump’s comment, clearly made in jest, indicating that he had asked his aides to slow the COVID-19 testing down in order to keep the number of positive results under control. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) immediately attacked the president and demanded “answers” on behalf of the American people.
Pelosi is right: Americans deserve answers. The answers they deserve have nothing to do with Trump’s recent remarks, however, but rather Pelosi’s conduct in office.
Pelosi’s office released a statement condemning President Trump in language worth quoting at length:
Testing, tracing, treatment and social distancing are the only tools we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but President Trump orders his Administration to slow down the testing that saves lives.
The President’s efforts to slow down desperately needed testing to hide the true extent of the virus mean more Americans will lose their lives.
This Tuesday, members of the Trump Administration’s coronavirus task force will testify before the Energy & Commerce committee. The American people are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing when experts say much more is needed.
The President is ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to lead. Senator McConnell must stop obstructing The Heroes Act and the life-saving testing resources it provides.
Pelosi’s theatrics remind Americans that it was she who took a tour through San Francisco’s Chinatown in February, and invited others to join her and to stand together in defiance of the virus, assuring them they had nothing to fear. It was also Pelosi who objected to Trump’s expanded travel ban, which we now know curbed the spread of the coronavirus and helped save American lives.
Finally, and as the most glaring example of her utter hypocrisy, Pelosi joined some of the George Floyd protestors and indicated that there was plenty of good social distancing among the crowds and on television. In reality, many of the “protestors,” who despicably mobbed businesses and vandalized various monuments, did so without wearing masks and/or practicing anything like social distancing.
In calling on Trump to “answer” for his “comment,” Pelosi wants Americans to believe that she is on their side. In reality, Pelosi’s claims are disingenuous and her apparent call for “answers” is nothing more than a ruse to deflect the American public’s attention away from her failures.
In fact, the American public deserves answers to several questions, including:
- Why did Pelosi pursue impeachment of a duly elected president without any evidence of an impeachable offense?
- Why did Pelosi refuse to hold a House vote on the impeachment inquiry or to allow transparency during the impeachment inquiry phase by permitting Republicans fully to participate in the investigation?
- Why did Pelosi intentionally refrain from sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate after the House voted to impeach the president?
- Why did Pelosi give free “advice” to immigrants who were in the country illegally and advise them how to avoid arrest and deportation by ICE agents?
- Why did Pelosi (and House Democrats) fail to take corrective action when members of her/their own party made comments that were blatantly “racist,” or “anti-Semitic,” yet, instead, decided to draft a resolution condemning the president?
- Why did Pelosi condemn President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus when she failed to demand a stop to the recent protests where people were clearly not practicing social distancing and/or wearing masks?
- Why did Pelosi fail to demand a full-fledged investigation into Joe Biden after allegations of sexual assault surfaced against him?
- Why did Pelosi tear up President Trump’s State of Union speech when doing so showed a complete disregard and a lack of respect towards the office of the president?
Actions speak louder than words, and when it comes to the virus, the differences between Trump and Pelosi could not be clearer.
President Trump took decisive action against China with the travel ban, closed the border with Canada and imposed restrictions on Mexico, issued executive orders when necessary, shut down travel between the United States and Europe, and took decisive actions within the United States all to help curb the spread of the virus.
Among her “achievements,” Pelosi marched with the “protestors” and, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out, delayed a stimulus bill in the Senate for days because she wanted to force a vote-by-mail mandate, private pension bailouts, and carbon neutrality for the airlines.
Americans deserve an explanation for the widespread government mismanagement and obvious double standard during the Coronavirus lockdown and subsequent Floyd riots. Speaker Pelosi has plenty to answer for.